Wolfe Switches Publishers After 40 Years
After 40 years with Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Tom Wolfe will publish his new novel, “Back to Blood,” with Little, Brown and Company. Wolfe is known for such best-selling titles as “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” and “The Right Stuff.”
According to The New York Times, the 76-year-old author received an advance of almost $7 million for the book, which will be edited by Little, Brown Senior Editor Pat Strachan. Strachan was formerly Wolfe’s editor at Farrar, Strauss. Publication is scheduled for 2009.
The Canadian Press reported that, per a publishing official familiar with the negotiations, Farrar, Strauss and Wolfe could not agree on a new contract. Having lost money on his most recent novel, “I Am Charlotte Simmons,” the publisher reportedly was offering a reduced advance for “Back to Blood.”
The new novel, according to Little, Brown, will “consider class, family, wealth, race, crime, sex, corruption and ambition in Miami,” and include a cast of characters ranging from a second-generation Cuban police officer to a woman of Haitian background who passes for Anglo.
“The opportunity to work with the American master Tom Wolfe is the kind of thrill and challenge that people entering book publishing dream of,” says Michael Pietsch, publisher of Little, Brown. “I picked ‘The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby’ off a library spinner rack in 1960-something, and it tore the top of my head off—I’d never imagined a writer’s voice could be that alive on the page. Everyone at Little, Brown is exhilarated to be working with Tom Wolfe to bring his new novel to readers in the Internet age.”
- Companies:
- Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- Little & Brown