The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby - Writing Style

Writing Style

As the title of the book indicates, Wolfe liberally uses colorful language. In addition, he makes frequent use of onomatopoeia, and uses all manner of type: capitalization, italics, multiple exclamation points, dashes, etc. Another characteristic of Wolfe's writing is switching from highly technical or scientific explanations to very colloquial turns of phrase, often within a single sentence. And, just as Wolfe uses medical jargon when describing the body, he uses commercial language when describing products and slang and vulgarity when chronicling sub-cultures.

Most of these techniques remain hallmarks of Wolfe's writing style throughout his career, including in his publications following The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby: The Pump House Gang, another collection of essays, and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Wolfe's chronicle of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters.

Read more about this topic:  The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby

Famous quotes containing the words writing and/or style:

    The writing career is not a romantic one. The writer’s life may be colorful, but his work itself is rather drab.
    Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876–1958)

    I shall christen this style the Mandarin, since it is beloved by literary pundits, by those who would make the written word as unlike as possible to the spoken one. It is the style of all those writers whose tendency is to make their language convey more than they mean or more than they feel, it is the style of most artists and all humbugs.
    Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)