Famous and Gravy: Dead celebrity biographies Electric Vanities (Tom Wolfe)
This person died in 2018 at age 88. When he graduated college in 1951 he had enough skill as a baseball player to earn a tryout with the Giants. He earned his PhD in American Studies from Yale in 1957. Beginning in the 1960s he helped create the enormously influential hybrid of fiction techniques into non-fiction known as New Journalism. He was instantly recognizable as he strolled down Madison Avenue — a tall, slender, blue-eyed, boyish-looking man in his spotless three-piece white bespoke suit. He authored “The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test”, “The Right Stuff”, and “Bonfire of the Vanities”. Today’s dead celebrity is Tom Wolfe
Famous & Gravy is created and co-hosted by Amit Kapoor and Michael Osborne. This episode was produced by Jacob Weiss. Visit our website at famousandgravy.com and also enjoy our free mobile quiz game at deadoraliveapp.com
If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episode 41 “Viva Bojangles” (Jerry Jeff Walker) and Episode 23 “Book Rancher” (Larry McMurtry)
LINKS:
New York Times Obituary for Tom Wolfe
Article by Michael Lewis on Tom Wolfe in Vanity Fair
“The Making of Tom Wolfe’s Radical Chic” in Vulture
Trailer for ‘The Right Stuff’ movie
Trailer for ‘The ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’ movie
Tom Wolfe’s guest appearance on The Simpsons
Famous & Gravy on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter
Famous & Gravy official website
Through obituary-driven conversation, this episode examines Tom Wolfe's cultural resonance as part of a biographies from a different point of view and known for obituary-based storytelling, tracing the impact of acclaim, adversity, and legacy construction. The conversation deepens our view of what a life can teach us posthumously. This legacy podcast explores celebrity obituary podcast and contributes to famous lives reframed.
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