Hooking Up

Rating:
Summary: Wolfe's an 18-k Renaissance man
Review: Back in the 1970s, Wolfe spoke @our school & in his 3-piece yellow suit proposed a most ludicrous notion: that the great cultural revolution that we all thought was happening back then would really occur 30 years hence, when the spoiled college kids & Vietnam vets & blue collar types squared off. But the New Journalism puzzled me, & a year later I'd left grad school for a less-than-min wage orderly job.

That time Wolfe spoke of, chronologically anyway, is now. Of course, tastes've changed, & blue collars've been pretty much dismissed by powerbrokers. Now have a band of 70s-style spoiled rich kids (Bush et al.) playing war, something they evidently missed out on back when the domino theory was applied to nations & not to corporate sponsors. On the other side we have... a band of 70s-style spoiled rich kids (neo-feminists & Marxophiles)... playing...war?

Well, turns out they all coulda taken a lesson from Robert Noyce, the hero of Tom Wolfe's "Two Young Men Who Went West," in his recent collection "Hooking Up." Wolfe weaves a mesmerizing parallel betw. the Congregationalist founder of Grinnell, IA, Josiah Grinnell, & Noyce, one of its star 20th century citizens & inventor of the integrated circuit.

Wolfe's description of Noyce's anti-hierarchy business approach @Fairchild Semiconductor in what became Silicon Valley parallels Grinnell's demand of pastor-as-teacher, not leader. What Wolfe calls the feudal approach to business "back East" is more firmly entrenched now than at the dawn of the semiconductor. Wolfe didn't & didn't have to conclude that although we've welcomed the integrated circuit & microprocessor into our culture, we've locked out the spirit of equality that was home to Robert Noyce. (Want proof? how many idiotic motivational seminars has your executive staff ordered this year? How many morale-boosting pep rallies? How many touchy-feely bake-off sessions?)

Otherwise, Tom Wolfe seems remarkably orthodox in his cultural persuasion: he likes the whole biology-is-destiny concept (a.k.a. sociobiology) & almost appears to be jockeying for a pole positon in the "right" stuff corner with Bill Kristol & cricket Lynne Cheney. Maybe most of the folks that read him are also; otherwise, they might claim that they have their own Three Stooges (George, Dick, & Don). Personally, I'd love to see Wolfe take on some narrower, more intense targets, like Sartre's theory of practical ensembles.

Rating:
Summary: Not Bonfire, but really good
Review: HOOKING UP is an anthology of some of Tom Wolfe's famous satirical, often nasty, but humorous takes on American society, especially the literary world. He also compares the beginning of the "American" millennium to that of four decades ago. Mr. Wolfe leaves no doubt what he feels and what he believes most of the world thinks of the current American Revolution that centers on tremendous technological progress in genetics, computers, and the neurosciences.

The title story is very entertaining and if the reader has a teen or someone in their young twenties ask them about its accuracy. The other twelve short story-commentaries are all enjoyable though Mr. Wolfe's fans have read some of them already. (They reminded me of some of McCrea's works-think his CHILDREN'S CORNER or his BARK OF THE DOGWOOD). The novella forecasts TV scandals and though it does not quite hook the reader beyond second base (remember this reviewer is from the old school) quite like the rest of Mr. Wolfe's stinging commentaries, the tale seems accurately plausible. Fans of Mr. Wolfe will round the bases (old school) with HOOKING UP.

Rating:
Summary: More than half of book is great!
Review: I am a fan of Tom Wolfe because I have so often put down books of fiction thinking, "This ding-a-ling author is just making all this stuff up. It is not informative, nor inspiring and has no relevance to my life.I don't have time for this!" With Wolfe I feel like he is a more honest friend, sharing more real experiences. He gives at least some actual clues about aspects of America that affect me, but I might otherwise never see....There are also wonderful references to Nietsche, American and European history, many American novelists, and there is a great prescription on how to write a good novel.
BUT I was disappointed in much of these essays. My favorite essay may have been "...the Rococco Marxists"...and I was surprised that he was not more critical of certain American professors. He may have politely suggested otherwise but ended with the conclusion that "all" many college professors "really want" is 'to be aloof from the bourgeois'...Monks want to be aloof like this. Is he saying they are holy monks? These professors enjoy many aspects of celebrity: wonderful long vacations all over the world, fine houses, cars, restauraunts, hotels, a sex life better than the most of us? More importantly they may have profound effects on our very powerful class of lawyers and judges, people in the media, etc. I was left with the impression that Wolfe is more worried about offending his own peer group than speaking honestly about some of these issues.
Re: "Ambush at Fort Bragg"....Was it really necessary to have one of the villains go on at great length about his fellow villains' heroic deeds at Mogadishu...a retelling of "Blackhawk Down" ...when they were confronted with damning evidence that the 3 of them had murdered a homosexual in their unit? I think Wolfe might argue 'Yes, that is the whole point...' but it seemed in bad taste, and curious as Wolfe is elsewhere saying some very patriotic things. Surely there was a better way to do this piece. And what is with throwing pies at a miserable jewish insider again? The TV news producer was jewish wasn't he? Is Wolfe running out of funny ideas? Aren't all his jewish friends getting pissed off?....
I loved the stories about the Fairchild Semiconductor founders, and the Harvard zoology-Ant-genius who caused such a controversy; I was puzzled that there was not discussion of the old, non-controversial view that man is part genetic traits and part social learning (nurture vs nature) This Harvard professor did not invent 'trait theory'. ....I didn't like "The New Yorker" parody and related pieces and couldn't finish them... [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: The Write Stuff
Review: I can think of no essayist writing in the U. S. today in the class with Tom Wolfe with the exception of the venerable Gore Vidal. As usual, Mr. Wolfe delivers up insightful satire on a variety of subjects: the sexual mores of America's youth, the awfulness of most modern so-called art, the decadence of the "literary" novel, to name a few. Then there is a short novel AMBUSH AT FORT BRAGG. I totally agree with Mr. Wolfe in his assessment of the artist Frederick Hart called "The Invisible Artist." Is is common knowledge now that the "art" world, that world that Wolfe describes as "scarcely a world. . . some three thousand curators, dealers, collectors, scholars, critics, and artists in New York" refused to ever acknowledge or even review Hart's beautiful sculptures at both the National Cathedral and the Vietnam Soldiers. (Something tells me that Michelangelo would have given Mr. Hart a fantastic review.) As Mr. Wolfe says so well, Hart was doomed; he had a quality not found in many so-called modern artists, he was skilled.

Another great essay is "My Three Stooges." Here Mr. Wolfe gets the last laugh on Messers Mailer, Updike and Irving, all of whom attacked A MAN IN FULL as mere entertainment. While I disagree with Wolfe's assessment of some of the writers he lists as having written "wonderful" novels-- I'm thinking in particularly of WAITING TO EXHALE; I would never call that novel wonderful but a quick, mindless entertaining read-- certainly he is right that some of the Mailer and John Irving "stuff" is basically unreadable-- I've never known anyone who could have read ANCIENT EVENINGS even if they had wanted to. So Wolfe gets the last laugh on these "literary" writers. I believe many people would say, however, that Updike's Rabbit is a great character and as American as Huck Finn.

But even if you disagree with Mr. Wolfe, he entertains you, makes you smile, and, yes, makes you think.

Rating:
Summary: Disjointed Flashes of Brilliance
Review: I've been a Tom Wolfe fan for more than 30 years and have always been frustrated by the leisurely pace of his literary production. His major works have been few, and he allowed more than a decade to pass between Bonfire of the Vanities and A Man in Full, the tantalizing and highly successful forays into fiction that have marked the maturation of his career. Apparently Wolfe's publishers, watching financial opportunity dribble away under the weight of writer's block, have been frustrated too, because "Hooking Up" gives the impression that the author may have compiled it under duress. The book is largely a collection of previously published pieces, some of them very old, patched together with spicy bits of new turn-of-the-millennium type commentary. I tried my best to discern some pattern to the choice of articles that were included, or to the order in which they were presented, but I can see little. There's one piece of short fiction, written very much in the style of his novels, and which is vintage Wolfe, but which loses force thrown in this way as an out-of-context fragment. The rest of the pieces are non-fiction and cover a crazy-quilt of subjects, many of them arcane. However, part of the greatness of Tom Wolfe is that he's never boring, imbuing as he does the most mundane material with intensity, insight and humor. In one essay, for example, he tells the story Edward O. Wilson, an introvert who devoted his early life to the scientific study of ants and went on from there to become a famous (among academics) and highly controversial proponent of biological determinism. In a similar nerdy-heroic vein, other republished essays focus on scientists and sixties technology wizards, foreshadowing Michael Lewis 30 years later in both style and content. Great writers can be petty human beings at times and, disappointingly, this side of Wolfe's nature is apparent occassionally in Hooking Up, most egregiously in "My Three Stooges". The `stooges' in this sharp little diatribe turn out to be no lesser personages than Norman Mailer, John Updike, and John Irving, all three of whom publicly attacked Wolfe when A Man in Full appeared in print. Wolfe's inference that they were motivated by jealousy at the runaway success of his book is probably fair enough, although he stoops to the same level himself here, rounding out the spectacle of America's senior literary titans, the `stooges' plus Wolfe now, behaving like a flock of catty old gossips. The book closes in this same sarcastic mode with Wolfe's gleeful reproduction of hostile parodies he wrote in the 1960's of the quirky people and stuffy culture surrounding The New Yorker magazine. Despite all these limitations, and despite the venomous writer's shop-talk, Hooking Up is a book that I have to recommend, at least to Tom Wolfe fans. Many of these pieces, taken by themselves, still shimmer with his genius and love of life. They're enough to make us hungry for a real book from him again, a project which at one point he promises he's currently at work on. We can only hope it doesn't take him another ten years to produce it!

Rating:
Summary: Wolfe Scores
Review: I've previously enjoyed The Right Stuff and Wolfe's two novels, but I had never read any of his essays or short stories. "Hooking Up" was an excellent, accessible introduction into these genres. The essays in the book cover a range of topics about modern America including its sexual mores, the rise of technology, art and contemporary novels. He makes many great arguments for the greatness and unique character of America and uses his intelligent wit, knowledge of philosophy and historical facts to make strong cases. His writing, as always, is excellent and the stories were insightful. This collection also includes a novella that is both fun and concise (not always Wolfe's strong suit). I think this is a fabulous book for Wolfe fans like myself, but also good for people who want a quick introduction to him without committing to an 800 page novel. Further, it would be great reading for people interested in American Studies and provides a good starting point for lengthy debates. This is a very good book and well worth purchasing.

Rating:
Summary: Wolfe is the Mac-Daddy of American Greatness
Review: If you love living in America, if you're thrilled by the raw courage of entrepeneurial effort that explodes into success, and if you refuse to accept the center-left line America's liberal elite wants to hand you, then Tom Wolfe is your go-to guy. He's hard-working, brilliant, and writes like a man playing a burning piano.

Although many know him best for his novels like "Bonfire of the Vanities" and "A Man in Full", you're missing his best work if you don't read the essay collections like "Hooking Up". In this volume, we get the true story behind the birth of Silicon Valley, a tale of a great artist no one knows because he possesses actual skill, a novella skewering the television news magazines, and several other gems.

If you have a Wolfe collection, add this book to it. If you don't have a Wolfe collection, start one!

Rating:
Summary: I just don't think he's that original.
Review: Of Tom Wolfe, I've read thus far: Hooking Up, A Man in Full, and Bonfire of the Vanities -- but I think I'm done. His "observations" -- and his capacity for observation is the very quality for which so many reviewers are lamentably insistent upon praising him - evince, at best, a rudimentary understanding of modern culture, and most of his readers under 40 know it; or at least those who haven't been [swayed] by his reputation (though that, too, is waning). Bonfire was hardly of the earth-shattering importance with which so many ebullient reviewers infused it, and continue, in reviewing other novels, to offhandedly proliferate; A Man in Full was quite a lot worse, particularly the parts where Wolfe felt obliged to demonstrate his "keen ear" for the African American argot; and now he's gone and proven himself a pontificating windbag. One is actually embarrassed (the sort of vicarious embarrassment one feels violated for having been forced to experience) when he musters the effrontery to upbraid Updike, Irving and Mailer for their unanimous dislike of his meandering, clumsy novel with its contrived dialogue and characters and its idiosyncratic plotline, which ironically might not have been so utterly bereft of charm in Irving's hands.

Rating:
Summary: Extremely entertaining
Review: This latest Tom Wolfe collection lacks a central theme, but is nevertheless extremely entertaining. The essays deal with sexual mores, the influence of liberal catholicism and the influence of protestant dissent on the modern world, the mind set of the electronic media and many other matters. The essays are beautifully written. My only criticism of the book, which is itself immensely entertaining, is that it is, what used to be called, "bi-coastal", in its title essay and so is perhaps a bit more critical of American youth than is perhaps fair. I remember well Dr. Wolfe's comments on "co-eds" and "fox terriers" and whilst I thought it "right on" in those far off days, I do not think that "Hooking Up" covers everyone in the age group, there are now other sub-cultures, but in fairness, Dr. Wolfe does not claim that it does. A superb work!

Rating:
Summary: A very good book.
Review: Though not as good as Bonfire of the Vanities. It makes for an interesting read and is well worth the effort. It is short and sweet.