The Purple Decades

In the 1960s and the 1970s Tom Wolfe rose to fame as the foremost chronicler of the gaudiest period in American history. It began at a hot rod and custom car show where he marvelled at the little nest of pink angora angel's hair used for the purpose of "glamourous" display. It grew - with his fascination for the Las Vegas-style neon sculpture boom and its electro-pastel surge through the suburbs - into "the kandy-kolored tangerine - flake streamline baby" and the new journalism was born. Wolfe's innovations in style, his feats as a reporter and his insights into sections of America which now had the money to build monuments to their enthusiasms, dominated a period of widespread experimentaiton in the writing of non-fiction. This book describes this period in Wolfe's life.