1931- . US journalist and novelist. In the
1960s he was a founder of the `New
Journalism', which brought fiction's methods
to reportage. Wolfe recorded US mores and
fashions in Pop style in The Kandy-Kolored
Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby 1965. His
sharp social eye is applied to the New York
of the 1980s in his novel The Bonfire of the
Vanities 1988. Wolfe coined the term `radical
chic' in the late 1960s, reporting on a party
held by New York socialites for the Black
Panthers. His book The Right Stuff 1979,
describing the US space programme, was later
filmed.