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:
“We cannot spare our children the influence of harmful values by turning off the television any more than we can keep them home forever or revamp the world before they get there. Merely keeping them in the dark is no protection and, in fact, can make them vulnerable and immature.”
—Polly Berrien Berends (20th century)
“The improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man’s existence: as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A healthy soul stands united with the Just and the True, as the magnet arranges itself with the pole, so that he stands to all beholders like a transparent object betwixt them and the sun, and whoso journeys towards the sun, journeys towards that person. He is thus the medium of the highest influence to all who are not on the same level.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)