Influence
Wolfe is credited with introducing the terms "statusphere," "the right stuff," "radical chic," "the Me Decade," "social x-ray," and "good ol' boy" into the English lexicon. He is sometimes credited with inventing the term "trophy wife" as well, but this is incorrect: he described emaciated wives as "X-rays" in his novel The Bonfire of the Vanities but did not use the term "trophy wife". According to journalism professor Ben Yagoda, Wolfe is also responsible for the use of the present tense in magazine profile pieces; before he began doing so in the early 1960s, profile articles had always been written in the past tense.
Read more about this topic: Tom Wolfe
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“Exhaust them, wrestle with them, let them not go until their blessing be won, and, after a short season, the dismay will be overpast, the excess of influence withdrawn, and they will be no longer an alarming meteor, but one more brighter star shining serenely in your heaven, and blending its light with all your day.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Constitutional statutes ... which embody the settled public opinion of the people who enacted them and whom they are to govern—can always be enforced. But if they embody only the sentiments of a bare majority, pronounced under the influence of a temporary excitement, they will, if strenuously opposed, always fail of their object; nay, they are likely to injure the cause they are framed to advance.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Standing armies can never consist of resolute robust men; they may be well-disciplined machines, but they will seldom contain men under the influence of strong passions, or with very vigorous faculties.”
—Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)