Thesis (M.A.)--Florida State University, 2006. / Advisor: Leigh Edwards, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of English. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 22, 2006) Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 107 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

abstract: During the 1960s, American youth were coming of age in a post–war period marked by an unprecedented availability of both money and leisure time. These conditions afforded young people new opportunities for exploring fresh ways of thinking and living, beyond the traditional norms of their parents' generation. Tom Wolfe recognized that a revolution was taking place, in terms of manners and morals, spearheaded by this latest generation. He built a career for himself reporting on the diverse groups that were developing on the periphery of the mainstream society and the various ways they were creating social spaces, what he termed “statuspheres,” for themselves, in which to live by their own terms. Using the techniques of the New Journalism—“immersion” reporting that incorporated literary devices traditionally reserved for writers of fiction—Wolfe crafted creative non–fiction pieces that attempted not only to offer a glimpse into the lives of these fringe groups, but also to place the reader within their subjective experiences. This thesis positions Wolfe as a sort of liminal trickster figure, who is able to bridge the gap between disparate worlds, both physical and figurative. Analyzing several of Wolfe's works from the time period, it works to demonstrate the almost magical way in which Wolfe infiltrates various radical, counterculture and otherwise “fringe” groups, while borrowing freely from elements across lines of literary genre, in order to make his subjects' experiences come alive on the page. This work attempts to shed light on his special ability to occupy multiple spaces and perspectives simultaneously, to offer the reader a multidimensional look into the lives of cultural outsiders and the impact that they had and continue to have on the overarching discussion of the American Experience. Ultimately, this paper argues that by exposing these various outlying facets of American culture to the mainstream readership, Wolfe acts as a catalyst to reincorporate these fringe elements within the larger conversation of what it means to be American, thereby spurring a greater cultural awareness and an expansion of the collective American consciousness. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. English 2014

Tom Wolfe was a founding father of New Journalism, revolutionizing journalistic reporting by introducing literary tools of storytelling. The literary influence on New Journalism is well-covered by journalism scholars, but Wolfe was also a fiction writer, and as such he actively tried to rally his generation of fiction writers behind him for a New Social Novel, more grounded in reality and reporting. His post-postmodern novels also amalgamate journalism and literature, but how and to what extent journalism influenced his fiction writing is a story yet untold.  Wolfe provided a normative blueprint for how to achieve verisimilitude in fiction, in his literary manifesto: “Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast”. At about the same time, he started writing the novel A Man in Full. Using A Man in Full as an application of his ideas of the ideal novel, this thesis investigates how Wolfe constructed the reality effect in his fiction and foregrounds the origins of Tom Wolfe’s literary voice, focusing on onomatopoetic language, statuspheric minutiae, expressive punctuation, and Wolfe’s characteristic wake-the-dead prose style. I argue that Wolfe did reinvent verisimilitude in literary realism, but not in the way that he intended, through reporting and status details, but rather through language.