Editing Tom Wolfe (section)

==Critical reception==
[[Kurt Vonnegut]] said Wolfe is "the most exciting—or, at least, the most jangling—journalist to appear in some time," and "a genius who will do anything to get attention."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/11/08/specials/wolfe-kandy.html|work=[[The New York Times]]|title=Infarcted! Tabescent!|author=Vonnegut, Kurt|date=June 27, 1965}}</ref> [[Paul Fussell]] called Wolfe a splendid writer and stated "Reading him is exhilarating not because he makes us hopeful of the human future but because he makes us share the enthusiasm with which he perceives the actual."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/11/08/specials/wolfe-purple.html|work=[[The New York Times]]|title=The Best Right Stuff|author=Fussell, Paul|date=October 10, 1982}}</ref> Critic [[Dwight Garner (critic)|Dwight Garner]] praised Wolfe as "a brilliantly gifted social observer and satirist" who "made a fetish of close and often comically slashing detail" and was "unafraid of kicking up at the pretensions of the literary establishment."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/books/tom-wolfe-appraisal.html|work=[[The New York Times]]|title=Tom Wolfe Kept a Close, Comical and Astonished Eye on America|author=Garner, Dwight|date=May 15, 2018}}</ref> [[Harold Bloom]] described Wolfe as "a fierce storyteller, and a vastly adequate social satirist".<ref name="Bloom2009">{{cite book|author=Harold Bloom|title=Tom Wolfe|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uOhsxOeev7wC|year=2009|publisher=Infobase Publishing|isbn=978-1-4381-1351-7|page=1}}</ref> Novelist [[Louis Auchincloss]] praised Wolfe, describing ''The Bonfire of the Vanities'' as "a marvelous book".<ref>{{cite news|last=Carrier|first=David|title=Louis Auchincloss by David Carrier|url=https://bombmagazine.org/articles/louis-auchincloss/|work=Bomb Magazine|date=1 October 1997}}</ref>

Critic [[James Wood (critic)|James Wood]] disparaged Wolfe's "big subjects, big people, and yards of flapping exaggeration. No one of average size emerges from his shop; in fact, no real human variety can be found in his fiction, because everyone has the same enormous excitability."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2018/05/15/tom-wolfe-chronicler-and-satirist-american-culture-dies/XpVmk14wTzyYHosPXtVIeK/story.html|work=[[The Boston Globe]]|title=Tom Wolfe, pioneering 'New Journalist,' dies at 88|author=Italie, Hillel|date=May 15, 2018|access-date=May 15, 2018|archive-date=May 15, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180515225755/http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2018/05/15/tom-wolfe-chronicler-and-satirist-american-culture-dies/XpVmk14wTzyYHosPXtVIeK/story.html|url-status=dead}}</ref>

In 2000, Wolfe was criticised by [[Norman Mailer]], [[John Updike]] and [[John Irving]], after they were asked if they believed that his books were deserving of their critical acclaim. Mailer compared reading a Wolfe novel to having sex with a 300 lb woman, saying, "Once she gets to the top it's all over. Fall in love or be asphyxiated." Updike was more literary in his reservedness: He claimed that ''A Man in Full'' "amounts to entertainment, not literature, even literature in a modest aspirant form." Irving was perhaps the most dismissive, saying "It's like reading a bad newspaper or a bad piece in a magazine{{nbsp}}... read sentences and watch yourself gag." Wolfe responded, saying, "It's a tantrum. It's a wonderful tantrum. ''[[A Man in Full]]'' panicked Irving the same way it panicked Updike and Norman. Frightened them. Panicked them." He later called Updike and Mailer "two old piles of bones" and said again that Irving was frightened by the quality of his work. Later that year he published an essay titled ''My Three Stooges'' about the critics.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/feb/10/fiction.artsfeatures|title=A feud in full: John Updike, Norman Mailer and John Irving v Tom Wolfe|first=Julian|last=Borger|date=February 10, 2000|website=the Guardian}}</ref>