From a September 2023 entry in Air Mail.
My dad, Tom Wolfe, delighted in defending his style of writing and had no qualms about throwing barbs at other writers. In doing so, he was upholding something of a tradition. Sometimes his feuds were personal. Dad had never forgiven Anthony Haden-Guest for offering him up over dinner as a profile subject to Christopher Hitchens, who went on to skewer him in the press. He got his revenge by painting Haden-Guest as the drunken hack Peter Fallow in The Bonfire of the Vanities. At other times, Dad’s feuds concerned the importance…