Journalist and author Tom Wolfe will serve as the 2008-9 Park Distinguished Visitor.
Wolfe is recognized around the world as the preeminent social commentator of our time. Called the father of "new journalism," Wolfe is the author of 12 books, including the national best sellers The Right Stuff, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers and The Bonfire of the Vanities.
Thursday, October 30
7:30 p.m.
Emerson Suites
Free and open to the public
On Thursday, October 23, the public is invited to view two films based on Tom Wolfe's books. The Bonfire of the Vanities will screen at 6:00 p.m., followed by The Right Stuff at 8:30 p.m. Both films will be shown in the Park Auditorium.
The Park Distinguished Visitor Series
This series is sponsored by the Roy H. Park School of Communications and made possible through the generosity of the Park Foundation.
Past visitors have included journalist Christiane Amanpour and political adviser James Rubin, filmmaker Ken Burns, author and political satirist P. J. O'Rourke, president and CEO of the Public Broadcasting Service Pat Mitchell, journalist Bill Moyers, and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Clarence Page.
More on Tom Wolfe
For over three decades he has chronicled and forecast American culture with a wit and insight that eludes most futurists. His runaway best seller The Bonfire of the Vanities stands as a brilliant evocation of both the peculiar class structure and politics of New York City, and the economic excesses of the 1980s.
His novel, A Man in Full, received both outstanding critical and popular success. Hailed by Time and the Wall Street Journal as even better than its phenomenally successful predecessor, it had an unprecedented first-run printing of 1.2 million copies and was nominated for the National Book Award four weeks prior to publication.
As Newsweek once said, "no writer, reporter, or novelist is getting our world on paper better than Tom Wolfe."
Wolfe's newest book, I Am Charlotte Simmons, takes on the hallowed halls of America's modern university, from jocks to mutants, dormcest to tailgating, plus race, class, sex, and basketball. When beautiful, brilliant Charlotte Simmons arrives at Dupont University, she finds that sex, drugs, and kegs trump academic achievement every time. A scathing assessment of our nation's higher education, I Am Charlotte Simmons tackles some of the most pressing issues of our time.
His current project is Back to Blood, which will be a Bonfire-like tour of Miami, taking on "class, family, wealth, race, crime, sex, corruption, and ambition."
One of the most requested speakers in the nation, Wolfe's presentation has delighted some of the world's most prestigious corporations, associations, and universities. With his current lecture program he delivers a tour-de-force assessment of our society's cultural mindset.
In 1979, Wolfe won the American Book Award for general nonfiction for The Right Stuff. He was named recipient of the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award in 1980 by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and received the Columbia Journalism Award for distinguished service in the field of journalism that same year.
Raised in Richmond, Virginia, Wolfe received his bachelor's degree from Washington and Lee University, and his doctorate in American studies from Yale University. Afterward, he went to work as a reporter for the Springfield Union (in Massachusetts), the Washington Post, and the New York Herald Tribune, where he first began to push the envelope of conventional journalistic license.
Since then, his writing has appeared in New York Magazine, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Harper's.
