Salem State College Series

Tom Wolfe
Novelist, chronicler of American culture
"The Third Millennium & the Spirit of the Age"

Thursday
June 7, 2007
8:00 p.m.

A deft and articulate chronicler of American culture, author Tom Wolfe has delighted over three decades of readers with his witty, incisive social commentaries on life in our time. One of the most requested speakers in the nation, he secured his reputation as "the father of ‘New Journalism'" early in his career and continues to enjoy extraordinary success and popularity. His ability to put names to cultural phenomena have led to widespread adoption of "the right stuff," "radical chic,' "good ol' boy" and "the Me Generation" – all terms coined by Wolfe.

With the publication of his first book, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby, in 1965, Tom Wolfe secured his place as a contemporary literary force with which to be reckoned. In rapid succession, Wolfe published The Right Stuff, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Pump House Gang, Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, From Bauhaus to Our House, Bonfire of the Vanities and A Man in Full, all bestsellers. In his latest, I Am Charlotte Simmons, Wolfe takes on the world of academia.

Tom Wolfe won the 1979 American Book Award for general non-fiction for The Right Stuff, his account of the early days of NASA and its test pilot jockeys. In 1980, he was awarded the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from The American Institute of Arts and Letters and the Columbia Journalism Award for distinguished service in the field of journalism.

Mr. Wolfe will be speaking on "The Third Millennium and the Spirit of the Age."