Tom Wolfe as we have discovered enjoys to write in the style of Zola which is very detailed and full of description. On June 8th 1970, he wrote a piece in the New York Magazine called 'Radical Chic' which describes the adoption and promotion of radical political causes by celebrities, socialites and high society. Leonard Bernstein and his friends hosted a fundraiser party for the 'Black Panthers' ( black revolutionary socialist organisation). Wolfe went along and simply observed the party, its surroundings and the people there in great detail.
It struck me that the piece was so detailed and precise yet it started with a very brief time frame 'at 2 or 3 or 4am' which highlights that in this moment there was no sense of time as it wasn't important to all of these people having such a good time getting drunk. The sentences that follow are very long and detailed using many commas to break it up. There are also a few short, to the point sentences 'He felt groggy' that just simply tell the audience details that may help them to build up an image. There are many strong adjectives used throughout the piece that give us additional detail.
Tom Wolfe writing style is very effective but it is not the usual writing style of the news. The news is less detailed and structured to who, what, where, when and includes facts not description.
There is a lot of dialogue in this piece which give us an incite into exactly what the people are like in his vision and how they react to certain things. Some may wonder how he actually captures the exact words of the people as back in this time tape recorders were a very expensive piece of equipment. It was decided that he must of wrote it all exactly how the people spoke. He also uses phonetic dialogue to emphasise sounds to us such as the sound of the French man eating which has no meaning but was obviously a vivid sound at the time. The way people talk tells us a lot about them, their class, what type of mood they are in and even if they are drunk or not. Colour writing is where you paint a picture of what happens which Tom Wolfe does continuously throughout the piece.
It was interesting that Tom Wolfe went into such detail on the 'Black Panthers' disregarding their politics but concentrating on their clothing, their style and the way they looked. He went into detail on how cool they seemed, the way they walked and the fact that they wore sunglasses and carried a gun. This shows that Wolfe writes more in a feature style as he concentrates on the fashion and how people look rather than what they are known for.
Wolfe is obsessed with detail and writes using a lot of lists about what he can see. At one point he lists all of the people at the party as well as explaining what the room was like which at times was hard to keep up with as you forgot who he was talking about. Writing in lots of lists is a style of writing called automated writing. Wolfe doesn't always say the exact detail of things he writes cleverly and uses associations to jog the readers memory and get them engages in what he is saying. For example if he was explaining a table he would say, 'The table was the colour that tables usually are'.
Tom Wolfe and Hunter S Thompson are the founders of factually based entertainment but with added drama/fiction such as programmes like Top Gear. Dickens was propaganda and what we know to be the old Journalism.
Kentucky Derby by Hunter S Thompson was a realistic piece based on people getting drunk and being sick at horse racing. The majority of them were males who were drinking and betting on the horses having a good night. Thompson chose this event as he was bored and thought it would be a different event to witness. Like Nietzsche said 'boredom destroys Gods.'
Like Wolfe the approach is similar in the writing style as it is detailed following a bunch of people who are of middle and upper class. This makes the style slightly different to Wolfe's piece as the language changes throughout depending on what type of class the person is who's speaking. Both pieces build up a clear image of what is happening through the description. They are also both opinionated pieces which isn't necessarily proper journalism. The style of writing is more 'Gonzo' based which explains the experience and opinions of the person writing it. This is the most common style of New Journalism that follow Gonzo type pieces leaving out the structured layout of the news writing. Both pieces are examples of mimetic narration where you write the structure like it is a film. It is a basic narration with lots of added bits into it.
When cleaning up quotes for proper journalism we can end up changing what the person actually said. To prevent this you need to be honest and think weather the person saying it would notice or complain. Punctuation in a quote can also be just as effective as the quote itself. The correct use of ellipsis (...) is not for when you cut away a quote to fill it in. For example having a (quote)... (quote) this is not needed. You should use it when the person trails off in their speech to emphasise that is what they are doing.
It struck me that the piece was so detailed and precise yet it started with a very brief time frame 'at 2 or 3 or 4am' which highlights that in this moment there was no sense of time as it wasn't important to all of these people having such a good time getting drunk. The sentences that follow are very long and detailed using many commas to break it up. There are also a few short, to the point sentences 'He felt groggy' that just simply tell the audience details that may help them to build up an image. There are many strong adjectives used throughout the piece that give us additional detail.
Tom Wolfe writing style is very effective but it is not the usual writing style of the news. The news is less detailed and structured to who, what, where, when and includes facts not description.
There is a lot of dialogue in this piece which give us an incite into exactly what the people are like in his vision and how they react to certain things. Some may wonder how he actually captures the exact words of the people as back in this time tape recorders were a very expensive piece of equipment. It was decided that he must of wrote it all exactly how the people spoke. He also uses phonetic dialogue to emphasise sounds to us such as the sound of the French man eating which has no meaning but was obviously a vivid sound at the time. The way people talk tells us a lot about them, their class, what type of mood they are in and even if they are drunk or not. Colour writing is where you paint a picture of what happens which Tom Wolfe does continuously throughout the piece.
It was interesting that Tom Wolfe went into such detail on the 'Black Panthers' disregarding their politics but concentrating on their clothing, their style and the way they looked. He went into detail on how cool they seemed, the way they walked and the fact that they wore sunglasses and carried a gun. This shows that Wolfe writes more in a feature style as he concentrates on the fashion and how people look rather than what they are known for.
Wolfe is obsessed with detail and writes using a lot of lists about what he can see. At one point he lists all of the people at the party as well as explaining what the room was like which at times was hard to keep up with as you forgot who he was talking about. Writing in lots of lists is a style of writing called automated writing. Wolfe doesn't always say the exact detail of things he writes cleverly and uses associations to jog the readers memory and get them engages in what he is saying. For example if he was explaining a table he would say, 'The table was the colour that tables usually are'.
Tom Wolfe and Hunter S Thompson are the founders of factually based entertainment but with added drama/fiction such as programmes like Top Gear. Dickens was propaganda and what we know to be the old Journalism.
Kentucky Derby by Hunter S Thompson was a realistic piece based on people getting drunk and being sick at horse racing. The majority of them were males who were drinking and betting on the horses having a good night. Thompson chose this event as he was bored and thought it would be a different event to witness. Like Nietzsche said 'boredom destroys Gods.'
Like Wolfe the approach is similar in the writing style as it is detailed following a bunch of people who are of middle and upper class. This makes the style slightly different to Wolfe's piece as the language changes throughout depending on what type of class the person is who's speaking. Both pieces build up a clear image of what is happening through the description. They are also both opinionated pieces which isn't necessarily proper journalism. The style of writing is more 'Gonzo' based which explains the experience and opinions of the person writing it. This is the most common style of New Journalism that follow Gonzo type pieces leaving out the structured layout of the news writing. Both pieces are examples of mimetic narration where you write the structure like it is a film. It is a basic narration with lots of added bits into it.
When cleaning up quotes for proper journalism we can end up changing what the person actually said. To prevent this you need to be honest and think weather the person saying it would notice or complain. Punctuation in a quote can also be just as effective as the quote itself. The correct use of ellipsis (...) is not for when you cut away a quote to fill it in. For example having a (quote)... (quote) this is not needed. You should use it when the person trails off in their speech to emphasise that is what they are doing.
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