Episode 81: American Royalty

When Tom Wolfe died earlier this month, much of the conversation was about Wolfe’s journalism, his fiction, his character.

Tom Wolfe was also a design writer. His breakthrough piece of New Journalism was “There Goes (Varoom! Varoom!) That Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby,” about custom car culture, and he went on

Michael says that, when he began writing more about design, Wolfe was a model:

There was a kind of writing that was in trade magazines like Print and Communication Arts that was sort of like this quasi-fawning reportage. There was another kind of design writing that seemed to be very academic. And neither of them represented the way I actually felt about design.

I was thrashing around for models of people that could really write about design in a way that was lively and made it sound fun and even funny. Then I started reading Tom Wolfe.

Also mentioned this week:

• Anthony Lane on the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle
• Tom Wolfe obituaries in the New York TimesandWashington Post
• Ian Parkerprofiles Edward St. Aubynin The New Yorker
• Tom Wolfe onMaya Lin’s Vietnam memorial(1982)
• Patrick MelroseShowtime series
• Terry Gross interviews Edward St. Aubyn
• Associated Press,Hasbro trademarks Play-Doh scent

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