Editing Tom Wolfe (section)

==Novels==
Throughout his early career, Wolfe had planned to write a novel to capture the wide reach of American society. Among his models was [[William Makepeace Thackeray]]'s ''[[Vanity Fair (novel)|Vanity Fair]]'', which described the society of 19th-century England. In 1981, he ceased his other work to concentrate on the novel.

Wolfe began researching the novel by observing cases at the Manhattan Criminal Court and shadowing members of the homicide squad in [[The Bronx]]. While the research came easily, he encountered difficulty in writing. To overcome his writer's block, Wolfe wrote to [[Jann Wenner]], editor of ''[[Rolling Stone]]'', to propose an idea drawn from [[Charles Dickens]] and Thackeray: to serialize his novel. Wenner offered Wolfe around $200,000 to serialize his work.<ref>{{Harvnb|Ragen | 2002 |pp= 31}}</ref> The frequent deadline pressure gave him the motivation he had sought, and from July 1984 to August 1985, he published a new installment in each biweekly issue of ''Rolling Stone''.

Later Wolfe was unhappy with his "very public first draft"<ref>{{Harvnb|Ragen|2002|pp=32}}</ref> and thoroughly revised his work, even changing his protagonist, Sherman McCoy. Wolfe had originally made him a writer, but recast him as a bond salesman. Wolfe researched and revised for two years, and his ''[[The Bonfire of the Vanities]]'' was published in 1987. The book was a commercial and critical success, spending weeks on bestseller lists and earning praise from the very literary establishment on which Wolfe had long heaped scorn.<ref>{{Harvnb |Ragen|2002|pp=30–34}}</ref>

Because of the success of Wolfe's first novel, there was widespread interest in his second. This novel took him more than 11 years to complete; ''[[A Man in Full]]'' was published in 1998. The book's reception was not universally favorable, though it received glowing reviews in ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'', ''[[Newsweek]]'', ''[[The Wall Street Journal]]'', and elsewhere. An initial printing of 1.2 million copies was announced and the book stayed at number one on ''The New York Times''{{'}} bestseller list for ten weeks. Noted author [[John Updike]] wrote a critical review for ''The New Yorker'', complaining that the novel "amounts to entertainment, not literature, even literature in a modest aspirant form."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Updike |first1=John |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ov6OEEkZ5aMC |title=More Matter: Essays and Criticism |publisher=Random House Publishing Group |year=2009 |page=324 |isbn=978-0307488398 |access-date=May 15, 2018 }}</ref> His comments sparked an intense war of words in the print and broadcast media among Wolfe and Updike, and authors [[John Irving]] and [[Norman Mailer]], who also entered the fray.<ref>{{cite book|title=Literary feuds: a century of celebrated quarrels from Mark Twain to Tom Wolfe|last=Arthur|first= Anthony|date=2002|publisher=MJF Books|isbn=1-56731-681-6|location=New York|oclc=60705284| pages=200–202}}</ref> The novel was selected to be adapted into a television series by [[Netflix]] in 2021.<ref>{{cite web |last1=White |first1=Peter |title=Regina King & David E. Kelley Book Series Order For Adaptation Of Tom Wolfe's 'A Man In Full' |url=https://deadline.com/2021/11/regina-king-david-e-kelley-book-series-order-for-adaptation-of-tom-wolfes-a-man-in-full-1234868203/ |website=Deadline |date=4 November 2021}}</ref>

In 2001, Wolfe published an essay referring to his three main literary critics as "My Three Stooges."<ref>{{cite news |last=Shulevitz |first=Judith |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/01/06/17/bookend/bookend.html |title=The Best Revenge |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=June 17, 2001 |access-date=May 15, 2018 }}</ref> That year he also published ''[[Hooking Up]]'' (a collection of short pieces, including the 1997 novella ''Ambush at Fort Bragg'').

He published his third novel, ''[[I Am Charlotte Simmons]]'' (2004), chronicling the decline of a poor, bright scholarship student from Alleghany County, North Carolina, after attending an elite university. He conveys an institution filled with snobbery, materialism, anti-intellectualism, and sexual promiscuity. The novel met with a mostly tepid response by critics. Many social conservatives praised it in the belief that its portrayal revealed widespread moral decline. The novel won a [[Literary Review#Bad Sex in Fiction Award|Bad Sex in Fiction Award]] from the London-based ''[[Literary Review]]'', a prize established "to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel".<ref>{{cite news |last=Rhind-Tutt |first=Louise |url=https://inews.co.uk/culture/books/25-years-bad-sex-awards/ |title=Celebrating 25 years of the worst sex scenes in literary history |work=The i Paper |date=November 27, 2017 |access-date=May 15, 2018 }}</ref> Wolfe later explained that such sexual references were deliberately clinical.{{citation needed|date=September 2017}}

Wolfe wrote that his goal in writing fiction was to document contemporary society in the tradition of [[Charles Dickens]], [[Émile Zola]], and [[John Steinbeck]].

Wolfe announced in early 2008 that he was leaving his longtime publisher, [[Farrar, Straus and Giroux]]. His fourth novel, ''[[Back to Blood]]'', was published in October 2012 by [[Little, Brown and Company]]. According to ''[[The New York Times]]'', Wolfe was paid close to US$7 million for the book.<ref name=Motoko08>Rich, Motoko. "[https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/03/books/03wolfe.html Tom Wolfe Leaves Longtime Publisher, Taking His New Book]", ''[[The New York Times]]'', January 3, 2008. Retrieved January 3, 2008.</ref> According to the publisher, ''Back to Blood'' is about "class, family, wealth, race, crime, sex, corruption and ambition in Miami, the city where America's future has arrived first."<ref name = Trachtenberg08>Trachtenberg, Jeffrey A. "[https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB119932268159163799 Tom Wolfe Changes Scenery; Iconic Author Seeks Lift With New Publisher, Miami-Centered Drama]", ''[[The Wall Street Journal]]'', January 3, 2008. Retrieved January 3, 2008.</ref> The book was released to mixed reviews. ''Back to Blood'' was an even bigger commercial failure than ''I Am Charlotte Simmons''.<ref>{{cite web|title=Tom Wolfe's "Back to Blood" Cost $112 Per Reader|url=http://www.theawl.com/2013/02/tom-wolfes-back-to-blood-cost-112-per-reader|publisher=The Awl|access-date=May 14, 2013}}</ref>