Editing Tom Wolfe (section)

==Journalism and New Journalism==
Though Wolfe was offered teaching jobs in academia, he opted to work as a reporter. In 1956, while still preparing his thesis, Wolfe became a reporter for the ''[[The Republican (Springfield, Massachusetts)|Springfield Union]]'' in [[Springfield, Massachusetts]]. Wolfe finished his thesis in 1957.

In 1959, he was hired by ''[[The Washington Post]]''. Wolfe has said that part of the reason he was hired by the ''Post'' was his lack of interest in politics. The Post's city editor was "amazed that Wolfe preferred cityside to [[Capitol Hill]], the beat every reporter wanted." He won an award from [[NewsGuild-CWA|The Newspaper Guild]] for foreign reporting in [[Cuba]] in 1961 and also won the Guild's award for humor. While there, Wolfe experimented with fiction-writing techniques in feature stories.<ref name="Wolfe's Post">{{cite news |url = https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/30/AR2006063001308.html |title = Tom Wolfe's Washington Post |newspaper=The Washington Post |date = July 2, 2006 |access-date = March 9, 2007 | first=James | last=Rosen}}</ref>

In 1962, Wolfe left Washington D.C. for New York City, taking a position with the ''[[New York Herald Tribune]]'' as a general assignment reporter and feature writer. The editors of the ''Herald Tribune'', including [[Clay Felker]] of the Sunday section supplement ''[[New York (magazine)|New York]]'' magazine, encouraged their writers to break the conventions of newspaper writing.<ref name="la times">{{cite news |first= Dennis|last= Mclellan|title=Clay Felker, 82; editor of New York magazine led New Journalism charge  |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-02-me-felker2-story.html |work=Los Angeles Times |date=July 2, 2008 |access-date=November 23, 2008 }}</ref> Wolfe attracted attention in 1963 when, three months before the [[JFK assassination]], he published an article on [[George Ohsawa]] and the [[sanpaku]] condition foretelling death.<ref>Tom Wolfe (August 18, 1963) "Kennedy to Bardot, Too Much Sanpaku", ''[[New York Herald Tribune]]''</ref>

During the [[1962–63 New York City newspaper strike]], Wolfe approached ''[[Esquire (magazine)|Esquire]]'' magazine about an article on the [[hot rod]] and [[custom car]] culture of [[southern California]]. He struggled with the article until his editor, [[Byron Dobell]], suggested that Wolfe send him his notes so they could piece the story together. Wolfe procrastinated. The evening before the deadline, he typed a letter to Dobell explaining what he wanted to say on the subject, ignoring all journalistic conventions. Dobell's response was to remove the salutation "Dear Byron" from the top of the letter and publish it intact as reportage. The result, published in 1963, was "There Goes (Varoom! Varoom!) That Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby." The article was widely discussed—loved by some, hated by others. Its notoriety helped Wolfe gain publication of his first book, ''[[The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby]]'', a collection of his writings from the ''Herald-Tribune'', ''Esquire'', and other publications.<ref>{{Harvnb|Ragen|2002|pp=11–12}}</ref>

This was what Wolfe called [[New Journalism]], in which some journalists and essayists experimented with a variety of [[List of narrative techniques|literary techniques]], mixing them with the traditional ideal of dispassionate, even-handed reporting. Wolfe experimented with four literary devices not normally associated with feature writing: scene-by-scene construction, extensive dialogue, multiple points of view, and detailed description of individuals' status-life symbols (the material choices people make) in writing this stylized form of journalism. He later referred to this style as literary journalism.<ref>{{cite book|last=Wolfe|first=Tom|title=The New Journalism|year=1973|publisher=Harper & Row, Publishers|location=New York|isbn=0-06-014707-5|pages=[https://archive.org/details/newjournalism00wolf/page/31 31–33]|author2=E. W. Johnson|url=https://archive.org/details/newjournalism00wolf/page/31}}</ref> Of the use of status symbols, Wolfe has said, "I think every living moment of a human being's life, unless the person is starving or in immediate danger of death in some other way, is controlled by a concern for status."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://contemporarythinkers.org/tom-wolfe/|title=A Guide to the Work of Tom Wolfe|website=contemporarythinkers.org}}</ref>

Wolfe also championed what he called "saturation reporting," a reportorial approach in which the journalist "shadows" and observes the subject over an extended period of time. "To pull it off," says Wolfe, "you casually have to stay with the people you are writing about for long stretches&nbsp;... long enough so that you are actually there when revealing scenes take place in their lives."<ref>{{cite journal|last=Wolfe|first=Tom|title=The New Journalism|journal=Bulletin of American Society of Newspapers|date=September 1970|page=22}}</ref> Saturation reporting differs from "in-depth" and "investigative" reporting, which involve the direct interviewing of numerous sources and/or the extensive analyzing of external documents relating to the story. Saturation reporting, according to communication professor Richard Kallan, "entails a more complex set of relationships wherein the journalist becomes an involved, more fully reactive witness, no longer distanced and detached from the people and events reported."<ref>{{cite journal|last=Kallan|first=Richard A.|title=Tom Wolfe|journal=A Sourcebook of American Literary Journalism: Representative Writers in an Emerging Genre|year=1992|page=252|editor1-first=Thomas B.|editor1-last=Connery|publisher=Greenwood Press|location=New York}}</ref>

Wolfe's ''[[The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test]]'' is considered a striking example of New Journalism. This account of the [[Merry Pranksters]], a famous sixties counter-culture group, was highly experimental in Wolfe's use of [[onomatopoeia]], [[Free association (psychology)|free association]], and eccentric punctuation—such as multiple exclamation marks and italics—to convey the manic ideas and personalities of [[Ken Kesey]] and his followers.

In addition to his own work, Wolfe edited a collection of New Journalism with E.&nbsp;W. Johnson, published in 1973 and titled ''[[The New Journalism]]''. This book published pieces by [[Truman Capote]], [[Hunter S. Thompson]], [[Norman Mailer]], [[Gay Talese]], [[Joan Didion]], and several other well-known writers, with the common theme of journalism that incorporated literary techniques and which could be considered literature.<ref>{{Harvnb|Ragen|2002|pp=19–22}}</ref>