Tom Wolfe is a journalist and bestselling author to whom credited to the invention of new journalism. Tom Wolfe was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. His father Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Sr., was an agricultural scientist, and his mother Louise was landscaping designer who put massive emphasis on education and encouraged Tom to pursue his early literary interests while at St. Christopher. The young Tom Wolfe Jr. did very well in school. He had even an offer to attend Princeton University but politely turned down the offer and instead went to Washington and Lee University in Lexington City, Virginia. He later became a member of the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity. Wolfe studied in English and practiced his writing outside the classroom as the sports editor of the college newspaper and he also helped found a literary …show more content…
The man who had the most influence on his writing was professor, Marshall Fishwick, who was educated at Yale. Mr. Fishwick was more about the tradition of anthropology than the normal literary scholarship. Fishwick taught his classes to look at the whole of a culture, including those elements considered inappropriate. Which had massive impact on Wolfe's writing. Even the title of Wolfe's undergraduate thesis, "A Zoo Full of Zebras: Anti-Intellectualism in America," showed favoritism toward cultural criticism. At the same time while in college Wolfe had continued playing baseball as a pitcher and began to play semi-professionally. He graduated in 1951 with a bachelor's degree in English. In 1952 he earned a tryout with the New York Giants (which were to become the San Francisco Giants) but was cut after three days. After that Wolfe abandoned baseball and followed the example of professor Fishwick and enroll into Yale. At Yale while writing his PhD thesis he was