He arrived in New York in 1962, armed with a Ph.D. from Yale and three years' experience on the _Washington Post_. "I really love it in New York. It reminds me of the state fair in Virginia, where I grew up. ... The picture of the East Side really is of the man living in the $525,000 co-op, leaving the building at night with his wife, both clothed in turtleneck sweaters with pieces of barbed wire and jeans, going past a doorman who is dressed like an Austrian Army colonel from 1870." No relation to the novelist Thomas Wolfe, Tom Wolfe has written only one short piece of fiction in his life. He is now thinking about writing "a _Vanity Fair_ type of novel about New York" as his next major undertaking. In the meantime, he is working on a sequel to _The Painted Word_, his book-length essay abut modern art that appeared in 1975. "Another thing I'd like to try is a movie script," he added. "I've done one -- a series of vignettes about life in Los Angeles. ... But many talented writers just go bananas in trying to write for the movies. Because they're not in charge of what they're doing. All that a good director can do is keep from ruining the script. He cannot turn a bad script into a good movie. He can turn a good script into a bad movie. And often, I think, it happens, because the director is given a power that he simply should not have." Another possible project, said Wolfe, is a second volume of _The Right Stuff_, to bring the story up to the $250 million Soviet-American handshake in 1975. The 436-page first volume has been received with acclaim. In the _New York Sunday Times_ book review, C.D.B. Bryan wrote: "It is Tom Wolfe at his very best. ... It is technically accurate, learned, cheeky, risky, touching, tough, compassionate, nostalgic, worshipful, jingoistic -- it is superb." * * * An Interview with Tom Wolfe from _The Westsider_, 11-22-79 Tom Wolfe, one of the most original stylists in American writing today, burst spectacularly on the literary horizon in 1965 with _The Kandy Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby_, a collection of articles about contemporary American life written as nonfiction. Wolfe's adoption of stream of consciousness, his unorthodox use of italics and exclamation marks, his repetition of letters, and his effectiveness in inventing hip phrases with nonsense words and classical references, helped establish an entirely new literary form -- the nonfiction short story. His reputation was cemented by such books as _The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test_, _The Pump House Gang_ and _The Painted Word_, a lengthy essay on modern art. Wolfe sometimes illustrates his work with pen-and ink drawings. His latest book, _The Right Stuff_, deals with the age of rockets, the early astronauts and the world of military flying. Published in September 1979, it is a critical and commercial success that has already hit the best-seller list.