Tom Wolfe Dies At 88

MANHATTAN, NY — The legendary journalist Tom Wolfe died on Monday in a Manhattan hospital, his literary agency said.

He was 88. A representative from his agent's office said he had been hospitalized with an infection.

"He is not just an American icon, but he had a huge international literary reputation," his literary agent Lynn Nesbit told the Wall Street Journal. "All the same, he was one of the most modest and kindest people I have ever met. I never exchanged a cross word with him in our many years of working together."

Wolfe is best known as one of the architects of New Journalism, the revolutionary genre that starts in the 1960s and mixed reporting and nonfiction with literary style.

Wolfe started his career as a journalist at The Washington Post, before moving to New York City in 1962 and taking a job as a reporter at the New York Herald Tribune. From then, Wolfe spent much of his life chronicling the world of New York City as well as disparate narratives outside of it. He wrote for Esquire and New York Magazine throughout his long career, which included publishing 14 books.

Wolfe's first novel, "The Bonfire of the Vanities," was a fictional account of New York City in the 1980s. It was so well-regarded and influential that it's often been dubbed "the quintessential novel of the 80s."

The author is also well known for "The Right Stuff," the nonfiction narrative that followed American astronauts selected for the Project Mercury space program by NASA. It was made into a critically-acclaimed movie of the same name.

The New York Public Library acquired Wolfe's papers for $2.15 million in 2013, acquiring thousands of letters, drafts, outlines and research material from throughout his career.

"Tom Wolfe has been a citizen and analyst and critic of New York society in the midst of some of its greatest controversies," Tony Marx, the library’s president and chief executive, said at the time. "His work touches on so much of the sociology of the city."

Correction: An earlier version of this article misreported Wolfe's age when he died; he was 88.

This story has been updated throughout.

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