He had me from boyhood, his years with New York when it was the Sunday magazine offering of the dying New York Herald-Tribune and from his first anthology, The Kandy Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby. (The original headline on the title article, first published in Esquire: "There Goes (Varoom! Varoom!) That Kandy-Kolored (Thphhhhhh!) Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (Rahghhh!) Around the Bend (Brummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm) . . . . . ."; the article was about George Barris and the 1960s car customisers.) Few were so deft at harpooning the pretenses creeping into culture the way he did in such work as The Pump House Gang, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, The Painted Word, and From Bauhaus to Our House.
RIP Mr. Wolfe. Your books still occupy some of the most reachable space on my shelves.