The purple decades

In the 1960s and the 1970s Tom Wolfe rose to fame as a chronicler of the gaudiest period in American history. It began at a hot-rod custom-car show where he marvelled at the little nest of pink angora angel's-hair used for the purpose of glamorous display. It grew - with his fascination for the Las Vegas-style neon-sculpture boom and its electro-pastel surge through the suburbs - into the kandy-kolored tangerine - flake streamline baby and the new journalism was born.