Thomas Kennerly Wolfe, Jr., was born 2 March 1931 on Confederate Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, the son of Thomas Kennerly Wolfe, an agronomist and editor of the
Southern Planter, and Helen Hughes Wolfe, who encouraged young Tom to be an artist. In his spring 1991
Paris Review interview Wolfe revealed that he decided to become a writer at the age of six or seven in simple imitation of his father, whom he always saw writing at a desk. The volumes of Thomas Wolfe, the famous southern writer, were included on the family bookshelves, and Wolfe's parents had a hard time convincing Tom that he was not related to the author of
Look Homeward, Angel (1929) and
You Can't Go Home Again (1940). Wolfe said in the interview that he has been a "tremendous fan" of Thomas Wolfe's work throughout his life. Nevertheless, the name similarity was a problem. After graduating from Saint Christopher's prep school in Richmond in 1947, he experimented with a variety of pen names in his early writings at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. He began with "Tom Wolfe" as his freshman byline but abandoned that quickly for "Tekay Wolfe" in his sophomore and junior years.
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