74-673: CoEvolution Quarterly (1974–1985) was a journal descended from Stewart Brand 's Whole Earth Catalog . Brand founded the CoEvolution Quarterly in 1974 using proceeds from the Whole Earth Catalog . It evolved out of the original Supplement to the Whole Earth Catalog . Fred Turner notes that in 1985, Brand merged CoEvolution Quarterly with The Whole Earth Software Review (a supplement to The Whole Earth Software Catalog ) to create
148-648: A 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". Wolfe later explained that such sexual references were deliberately clinical. 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
222-492: A book and published Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto in 2009. The book examines how urbanization, nuclear power, genetic engineering , geoengineering , and wildlife restoration can be used as powerful tools in humanity's ongoing fight against global warming . In a 2019 interview, Brand described his perspective as "post-libertarian", indicating that at the time when the Whole Earth Catalog
296-433: A collection of his articles in this style, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby , adding to his notability. He published a second collection of articles, The Pump House Gang , in 1968. Wolfe wrote on popular culture, architecture, politics, and other topics that underscored, among other things, how American life in the 1960s had been transformed by post-WWII economic prosperity. His defining work from this era
370-742: A collection of his writings from the Herald-Tribune , Esquire , and other publications. This was what Wolfe called New Journalism , in which some journalists and essayists experimented with a variety of 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. Of
444-533: A conservative by The New Yorker , Vanity Fair , The Washington Post , National Review , and USA Today . Editor Byron Dobell labelled Wolfe a reactionary ; while a member of the Black Panther Party called him a racist, due to his portrayal of the party in Radical Chic . Wolfe rejected such labels, saying "If I have been judged to be right wing , I think this is because of
518-641: A daughter, Alexandra; and a son, Thomas Kennerly III. Wolfe died from an infection in Manhattan on May 14, 2018, at the age of 88. The historian Meredith Hindley credits Wolfe with introducing the terms "statusphere", "the right stuff", " radical chic ", " the Me Decade " and "good ol' boy" into the English lexicon . Wolfe was at times incorrectly credited with coining the term " trophy wife ". His term for extremely thin women in his novel The Bonfire of
592-502: 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 ... 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
666-637: 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." 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 , and eccentric punctuation—such as multiple exclamation marks and italics—to convey
740-546: A new installment in each biweekly issue of Rolling Stone . Later Wolfe was unhappy with his "very public first draft" 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
814-660: 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, encouraged their writers to break the conventions of newspaper writing. Wolfe attracted attention in 1963 when, three months before the JFK assassination , he published an article on George Ohsawa and
SECTION 10
#1732790573803888-612: A quite featureless black vacuum." In late 1968, Brand assisted electrical engineer Douglas Engelbart with the Mother of All Demos , a presentation of many revolutionary computer technologies (including hypertext , email, and the mouse ) to the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco. Brand surmised that given the necessary consciousness, information, and tools, human beings could reshape
962-465: A range of speakers, including Brian Eno , Neal Stephenson , Vernor Vinge , Philip Rosedale , Jimmy Wales , Kevin Kelly , Clay Shirky , Ray Kurzweil , Bruce Sterling , and Cory Doctorow . The Long Now Foundation has worked with Jeff Bezos to build the 10,000 Year Clock. Brand is the subject of the 2021 documentary film We Are As Gods . Stewart Brand is the initiator or was involved with
1036-728: A soldier in the U.S. Army , he was a parachutist and taught infantry skills; he later expressed the view that his experience in the military had fostered his competence in organizing. A civilian again in 1962, he studied design at San Francisco Art Institute , photography at San Francisco State College , and participated in a legitimate scientific study of then-legal LSD with Myron Stolaroff 's International Foundation for Advanced Study, in Menlo Park, California . In 1966, he married mathematician Lois Jennings, an Ottawa Native American . Brand has lived in California since
1110-584: A subjective style. Upon leaving Yale, he wrote a friend, explaining through expletives his personal opinions about his thesis. 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 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
1184-913: A transcription of technology historian Lewis Mumford 's talk "The Next Transformation of Man", in which he stated that "man has still within him sufficient resources to alter the direction of modern civilization, for we then need no longer regard man as the passive victim of his own irreversible technological development". The content of CoEvolution Quarterly often included futurism or risqué topics. Besides giving space to unknown writers with something to say, Brand presented articles by many respected authors and thinkers, including Mumford, Howard T. Odum , Witold Rybczynski , Karl Hess , Orville Schell , Ivan Illich , Wendell Berry , Ursula K. Le Guin , Gregory Bateson , Amory Lovins , Hazel Henderson , Gary Snyder , Lynn Margulis , Eric Drexler , Gerard K. O'Neill , Peter Calthorpe , Sim Van der Ryn , Paul Hawken , John Todd , Kevin Kelly , and Donella Meadows . In
1258-538: A tryout with the New York Giants , but was cut after three days, which he blamed on his inability to throw good fastballs. Wolfe abandoned baseball and instead followed his professor Fishwick's example, enrolling in Yale University 's American studies doctoral program. His Ph.D. thesis was titled The League of American Writers: Communist Organizational Activity Among American Writers, 1929–1942. In
1332-427: A vastly adequate social satirist". Novelist Louis Auchincloss praised Wolfe, describing The Bonfire of the Vanities as "a marvelous book". 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." In 2000, Wolfe
1406-497: Is The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (published the same day as The Pump House Gang in 1968), which for many epitomized the 1960s. Although a conservative in many ways (in 2008, he claimed never to have used LSD and to have tried marijuana only once ), Wolfe became one of the notable figures of the decade. In 1970, he published two essays in book form as Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers . "Radical Chic"
1480-831: Is an American project developer and writer, best known as the co-founder and editor of the Whole Earth Catalog . He has founded a number of organizations, including the WELL , the Global Business Network , and the Long Now Foundation . He is the author of several books, most recently Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto . Brand was born in Rockford, Illinois , and attended Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. He studied biology at Stanford University , graduating in 1960. As
1554-564: The Encyclopedia of Life . During 1986, Brand was a visiting scientist at the MIT Media Lab . Soon after, he became a private-conference organizer for such corporations as Royal Dutch Shell , Volvo , and AT&T . In 1988, he became a co‑founder of the Global Business Network , which became involved with the evolution and application of scenario thinking , planning, and complementary strategic tools. For fourteen years, Brand
SECTION 20
#17327905738031628-474: The Whole Earth Review . CoEvolution Quarterly became the first place to publish Ivan Illich 's Vernacular Values . This American political magazine article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . See tips for writing articles about magazines . Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page . Stewart Brand Stewart Brand (born December 14, 1938)
1702-514: The Iraq War . In a 2004 interview in The Guardian , he said that his "idol" in writing about society and culture is Émile Zola . Wolfe described Zola as "a man of the left", one who "went out, and found a lot of ambitious, drunk, slothful and mean people out there. Zola simply could not—and was not interested in—telling a lie." Despite his mostly conservative views, Wolfe also criticized
1776-753: The Whole Earth Catalog were published by the Portola Institute . Brand and his wife, Lois, traveled to communes in a 1963 Dodge truck known as the Whole Earth Truck Store , which moved to a storefront in Menlo Park, California . That first oversized Catalog , and its successors in the 1970s and later, reckoned a wide assortment of things could serve as useful "tools": books, maps, garden implements, specialized clothing, carpenters' and masons ' tools, forestry gear, tents, welding equipment, professional journals, early synthesizers, and personal computers. Brand invited "reviews" (written in
1850-508: The Whole Earth Catalog , quoting its farewell message: "Stay hungry. Stay foolish". To continue this work and also to publish full-length articles on specific topics in the natural sciences and invention, in numerous areas of the arts and the social sciences , and on the contemporary scene in general, Brand founded CoEvolution Quarterly in 1974, aimed primarily at educated laypeople. Brand never better revealed his opinions and reason for hope than when he ran, in CoEvolution Quarterly #4,
1924-406: The sanpaku condition foretelling death. During the 1962–63 New York City newspaper strike , Wolfe approached 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
1998-681: The 1960s. He and his second wife live on Mirene , a 64-foot (20 m)-long working tugboat . Built in 1912, the boat is moored in a former shipyard in Sausalito, California . He works in Mary Heartline , a grounded fishing boat about 100 yards (90 metres) away. One of his favorite items is a table on which Otis Redding is said to have written " (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay " (Brand acquired it from an antiques dealer in Sausalito). By
2072-488: The Flak Catchers . In 1979, he published the influential book The Right Stuff about the Mercury Seven astronauts, which was made into a 1983 film of the same name directed by Philip Kaufman . His first novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities , published in 1987, was met with critical acclaim and also became a commercial success. Its adaptation as a motion picture of the same name, directed by Brian De Palma ,
2146-783: The Third Great Awakening . In 1979, Wolfe published The Right Stuff , an account of the pilots who became America's first astronauts . Following their training and unofficial, even foolhardy, exploits, he likened these heroes to " single combat warriors" of a bygone era, going forth to battle in the Space Race on behalf of their country. In 1983, the book was adapted into an Academy Award -winning feature film . Wolfe also wrote two critiques of and social histories of modern art and modern architecture , The Painted Word and From Bauhaus to Our House , published in 1975 and 1981, respectively. The Painted Word mocked
2220-668: The administration of California Governor Jerry Brown . In 1985, Brand and Larry Brilliant founded the WELL ("Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link"), a prototypical, wide-ranging online community for informed participants the world over. The WELL won the 1990 Best Online Publication Award from the Computer Press Association . In 2000, Brand helped launch the All Species Foundation , which aimed to catalog all species of life on Earth. The project ceased functioning in 2007, transferring its mission to
2294-404: The course of his research, Wolfe interviewed Malcolm Cowley , Archibald MacLeish , and James T. Farrell . A biographer remarked on the thesis: "Reading it, one sees what has been the most baleful influence of graduate education on many who have suffered through it: It deadens all sense of style." Originally rejected, his thesis was finally accepted after he rewrote it in an objective rather than
CoEvolution Quarterly - Misplaced Pages Continue
2368-553: 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 ,
2442-406: 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
2516-454: The development of the following: Tom Wolfe Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr. (March 2, 1930 – May 14, 2018) was an American author and journalist widely known for his association with New Journalism , a style of news writing and journalism developed in the 1960s and 1970s that incorporated literary techniques. Much of Wolfe's work is satirical and centres on the counterculture of the 1960s and issues related to class , social status , and
2590-588: The ensuing years, Brand authored and edited a number of books on topics as diverse as computer-based media, the life history of buildings, and ideas about space colonies . He founded the Whole Earth Software Review , a supplement to the Whole Earth Software Catalog , in 1984. It merged with CoEvolution Quarterly to form the Whole Earth Review in 1985. From 1977 to 1979, Brand served as "special advisor" to
2664-530: The epicenter of an emerging counterculture, with the Summer of Love in 1967. Tom Wolfe includes Brand in his 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test . In 1966, while on an LSD trip on the roof of his house in North Beach, San Francisco , Brand became convinced that seeing an image of the whole Earth would change how we think about the planet and ourselves. He then campaigned to have NASA release
2738-460: The excessive insularity of the art world and its dependence on what he saw as faddish critical theory. In From Bauhaus to Our House he explored what he said were the negative effects of the Bauhaus style on the evolution of modern architecture. In 2016, Wolfe published The Kingdom of Speech , a critique of the work of Charles Darwin and Noam Chomsky . Wolfe synthesized what he construed as
2812-561: The first (Fall 1968) edition of the Whole Earth Catalog . Later in 1968, NASA astronaut Bill Anders took an Earth photo, Earthrise , from Moon orbit, which became the front image of the spring 1969 edition of the Catalog . 1970 saw the first celebration of Earth Day . During a 2003 interview, Brand explained that the image "gave the sense that Earth's an island, surrounded by a lot of inhospitable space. And it's so graphic, this little blue, white, green and brown jewel-like icon amongst
2886-431: The form of a letter to a friend) of the best of these items from experts in specific fields. The information also described where these things could be located or purchased. The Catalog ' s publication coincided with the great wave of social and cultural experimentation, convention-breaking, and " do it yourself " attitude associated with the " counterculture ". The Whole Earth Catalog had widespread influence within
2960-405: The fray. The novel was selected to be adapted into a television series by Netflix in 2021. In 2001, Wolfe published an essay referring to his three main literary critics as "My Three Stooges." 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
3034-517: 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. The frequent deadline pressure gave him the motivation he had sought, and from July 1984 to August 1985, he published
CoEvolution Quarterly - Misplaced Pages Continue
3108-401: The human future but because he makes us share the enthusiasm with which he perceives the actual." 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." Harold Bloom described Wolfe as "a fierce storyteller, and
3182-583: The international environmental ideology he had helped to develop. He wrote an article called "Environmental Heresies" in the May 2005 issue of the MIT Technology Review , in which he described what he considered necessary changes to environmentalism. He suggested, among other things, that environmentalists embrace nuclear power and genetically modified organisms as technologies with more promise than risk. Brand later developed these ideas into
3256-470: The lifestyles of the economic and intellectual elites of New York City . Wolfe began his career as a regional newspaper reporter in the 1950s, achieving national prominence in the 1960s following the publication of such best-selling books as The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (an account of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters ) and two collections of articles and essays, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby and Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing
3330-517: 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. 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. In 1965, Wolfe published
3404-438: The mid-1960s, Brand became associated with New York multimedia group USCO and Bay Area author Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters . Brand co-produced the 1966 Trips Festival , an early effort blending rock music and light shows , with Kesey and Ramón Sender Barayón . The Trips Festival was among the first Grateful Dead performances in San Francisco. An estimated 10,000 hippies attended, and Haight-Ashbury soon emerged as
3478-510: The movie as himself. 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 , 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
3552-624: The nearby historic Ginter Park neighborhood. He was student council president, editor of the school newspaper, and a star baseball player at St. Christopher's School , an Episcopal all-boys school in Richmond. In 1991, he wrote another touching remembrance of his childhood in Sherwood Park in a letter to a man who purchased the Wolfe home place. Upon graduation in 1947, he turned down admission to Princeton University to attend Washington and Lee University . At Washington and Lee, Wolfe
3626-569: The people he observed, making him, in their eyes, "a man from Mars, the man who didn't know anything and was eager to know." In 1989, Wolfe wrote an essay for Harper's Magazine , titled " Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast ". It criticized modern American novelists for failing to engage fully with their subjects, and suggested that modern literature could be saved by a greater reliance on journalistic technique. Asked to comment by The Wall Street Journal on blogs in 2007 to mark
3700-448: The people you are writing about for long stretches ... long enough so that you are actually there when revealing scenes take place in their lives." 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
3774-447: The political right. In 2004, Wolfe noted his support for political correctness , which he described as "a good effect because it is now bad manners to use racial epithets." However, in 2017, he attacked political correctness, mocking it as perpetual outrage. In 2016, Wolfe described Donald Trump as a "lovable megalomaniac...The childishness makes him seem honest." Wolfe later compared Trump to literary character Jay Gatsby . Wolfe
SECTION 50
#17327905738033848-618: 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 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. In 1962, Wolfe left Washington D.C. for New York City, taking
3922-540: The rural back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s, and the communities movement within many cities throughout the United States, Canada, and Australia. The 1972 edition sold 1.5 million copies, winning the first U.S. National Book Award in the Contemporary Affairs category. Steve Jobs ended his 2005 commencement address at Stanford University by acknowledging both Stewart Brand and
3996-413: The summer, in the style of Southern gentlemen . He found that the suit he had bought was too heavy for summer use, so he wore it in winter, which created a sensation. At the time, white suits were supposed to be reserved for summer wear. Wolfe maintained this as a trademark. He sometimes accompanied it with a white tie, white homburg hat , and two-tone spectator shoes . Wolfe said that the outfit disarmed
4070-782: The tenth anniversary of their advent, Wolfe wrote that "the universe of blogs is a universe of rumors" and that "blogs are an advance guard to the rear." He also took the opportunity to criticize Misplaced Pages, saying that "only a primitive would believe a word of" it. He noted a story about him in his Misplaced Pages bio article at the time which he said had never happened. Wolfe's views and choice of subject material, such as mocking left-wing intellectuals in Radical Chic , glorifying astronauts in The Right Stuff , and critiquing Noam Chomsky in The Kingdom of Speech sometimes resulted in his being labeled conservative . Wolfe has been labeled
4144-424: The then-rumored satellite image of the entire Earth as seen from space. He sold and distributed buttons for 25 cents each, asking, "Why haven't we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?" During this campaign, Brand met Richard Buckminster Fuller , who offered to help Brand with his projects. In 1967, a satellite, ATS-3 , took the photo. Brand thought the image of our planet would be a powerful symbol; it adorned
4218-501: The things I have mocked." Wolfe opposed the American two-party system . Wolfe supported George W. Bush as a political candidate and said he voted for him for president in 2004 because of what he called Bush's "great decisiveness and willingness to fight". Bush reciprocated the admiration, and is said to have read all of Wolfe's books, according to friends in 2005. Wolfe supported the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan , but opposed
4292-414: The title character is a student of neuroscience. Wolfe describes the characters' thought and emotional processes, such as fear, humiliation and lust, in the clinical terminology of brain chemistry. Wolfe also frequently gives detailed descriptions of various aspects of his characters' anatomies. Wolfe adopted wearing a white suit as a trademark in 1962. He bought his first white suit, planning to wear it in
4366-458: 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." 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
4440-506: The very literary establishment on which Wolfe had long heaped scorn. 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 , Newsweek , The Wall Street Journal , and elsewhere. An initial printing of 1.2 million copies
4514-513: The views of Alfred Russel Wallace and Chomsky on the language organ as not being a product of natural selection to suggest that speech is an invention that is responsible for establishing our humanity. Some critics claimed that Wolfe's view on how humans developed speech were not supported by research and were opinionated. In 1977, PBS produced Tom Wolfe's Los Angeles , a fictional, satirical TV movie set in Los Angeles. Wolfe appears in
SECTION 60
#17327905738034588-462: The whole of a culture, including those elements considered profane. Wolfe's undergraduate thesis, entitled "A Zoo Full of Zebras: Anti-Intellectualism in America," evinced his fondness for words and aspirations toward cultural criticism. Wolfe graduated cum laude in 1951. While still in college, Wolfe continued playing baseball as a pitcher and began to play semi-professionally. In 1952, he earned
4662-447: The world they had made (and were making) for themselves into something environmentally and socially sustainable. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, about 10 million Americans were involved in living communally . In 1968, using the most basic approaches to typesetting and page layout, Brand and his colleagues created issue number one of the Whole Earth Catalog , employing the subtitle "access to tools". Early editions of
4736-557: Was a biting account of a party given by composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein to raise money for the Black Panther Party . "Mau-Mauing The Flak Catchers" was about the practice by some African Americans of using racial intimidation ("mau-mauing") to extract funds from government welfare bureaucrats ("flak catchers"). Wolfe's phrase, " radical chic ", soon became a popular derogatory term for critics to apply to upper-class leftism . His Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine (1977) included Wolfe's noted essay, The "Me" Decade and
4810-536: Was a critical and commercial failure. Wolfe was born on March 2, 1930, in Richmond, Virginia , the son of Helen Perkins Hughes Wolfe, a garden designer, and Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Sr. (1893–1972), an agronomist and editor of The Southern Planter . He grew up on Gloucester Road in the Richmond North Side neighborhood of Sherwood Park . He recounted childhood memories in a foreword to a book about
4884-603: Was a member of the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity. He majored in English, was sports editor of the college newspaper, and helped found a literary magazine, Shenandoah, giving him opportunities to practice his writing both inside and outside the classroom. Of particular influence was his professor Marshall Fishwick , a teacher of American studies educated at UVA and Yale . More in the tradition of anthropology than literary scholarship, Fishwick taught his students to look at
4958-629: Was an atheist but said that "I hate people who go around saying they're atheists". Of his religious upbringing, Wolfe observed that he "was raised as a Presbyterian ". He sometimes referred to himself as a "lapsed Presbyterian." Wolfe was a defender of Catholic schools . Wolfe was also critical of the sexual revolution , describing it as a "sexual carnival." He expressed sympathy towards Puritanical-Christian views on sexuality. Wolfe lived in New York City with his wife Sheila, who designed covers for Harper's Magazine . They had two children:
5032-463: 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." 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
5106-416: Was being written, he did not fully understand the significance of the role of government in the development of technology and engineering. In his environmental position, he self-describes as an "eco-pragmatist". Brand is co‑chair and president of the board of directors of the Long Now Foundation and chairs the foundation's Seminars About Long-term Thinking . This series on long-term thinking has presented
5180-458: 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
5254-485: Was frightened by the quality of his work. Later that year he published an essay titled My Three Stooges about the critics. Wolfe's writing throughout his career showed an interest in social status competition. Much of Wolfe's later work addresses neuroscience . He notes his fascination in "Sorry, Your Soul Just Died", one of the essays in Hooking Up . This topic is also featured in I Am Charlotte Simmons , as
5328-550: 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. 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." The book
5402-547: Was on the board of the Santa Fe Institute (founded in 1984), an organization devoted to "fostering a multidisciplinary scientific research community pursuing frontier science". He has also continued to promote the preservation of tracts of wilderness. The Whole Earth Catalog implied an ideal of human progress that depended on decentralized, personal, and liberating technological development—so‑called "soft technology". However, in 2005, Brand criticized aspects of
5476-411: Was released to mixed reviews. Back to Blood was an even bigger commercial failure than I Am Charlotte Simmons . 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." Paul Fussell called Wolfe a splendid writer and stated "Reading him is exhilarating not because he makes us hopeful of
#802197