'Hooking Up' With Tom Wolfe

One day in my history tutorial, we were debating whether one could have a truly comprehensive understanding of what life in America was like during the 1960s. And it was on this subject that my tutorial leader started raving about Tom Wolfe and his 1968 book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. My TF insisted that reading Wolfe's account of the hippie era was and still is the best way to really get a sense of what the 1960s were like; other historical sources paled in comparison. The book was the best source by far. Tom Wolfe was just that good.

It's hard to argue with such a forceful recommendation. Wolfe has been in the spotlight since his early days as a reporter. He's coined popular phrases such as "the right stuff" and "good ol' boy," and written an enormous amount of insightful and controversial material covering everything from American architecture to rocket pilots. His last big production, the 1998 A Man In Full, landed him on the cover of Time magazine in his trademark dandy white suit. There was an 11-year wait between Wolfe's last two books, but two short years later he's back again with Hooking Up, a sometimes random collection of writing commenting on the state of affairs in American thought and habit today.

Once again, Wolfe is America's own inspired and intrepid reporter. This volume takes its title from the first essay, entitled "Hooking Up: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the Second Millennium: An American's World." Here, Wolfe touches on the themes he will take on in the rest of the book, topics like the Internet, art, sex in America, "intellectuals" (what are those?), the culture of Silicon Valley, and the strange habits of deconstructionists. After all, what better material for entertainment than that which is actually happening and unfolding around you? So goes the mantra of Tom Wolfe. He has established himself as the most visible (or vocal) proponent of detailed realism in American letters today, and his entire body of work is permeated by the premise that the best subject for a story is that elusive little thing called real life.

It's easiest to see the consequences of this attitude when it is applied to fiction. In a chapter called "My Three Stooges," Wolfe recounts the reception of his long-anticipated 1998 novel, A Man In Full. Not only was the novel a terrific commercial success, but it provoked strong reactions from a trio of highly respected novelists: John H. Updike''54, Norman K. Mailer '43, and John Irving. As Wolfe explains, these are his three stooges. The chapter is hilarious, self-serving, and provocative; Wolfe uses his three stooges to make his case for the future of the American novel (a case he has, not incidentally, made before). Novelists like Updike, Mailer and Irving, says Wolfe, write books that only other novelists of the same mistaken convictions would enjoy; more likely than not their most recent work "sank like a stone" from the public's interest. And yet they complain that there is a crisis in the health of the American novel, that nobody likes to read novels anymore-would-be readers would rather watch movies. Wolfe sees the same problem, and proposes a solution: "The American novel is dying, not of obsolescence, but of anorexia. It needs...food. It needs novelists with huge appetites and mighty, unslaked thirsts for...America...as she is right now. It needs novelists with the energy and the verve to approach America the way her moviemakers do, which is to say, with a ravenous curiosity and an urge to go out among her 270 million souls and talk to them and look them in the eye." America needs novelists like, well, like Tom Wolfe.

And this is not just an issue for the world of fiction, but for all the arts in America, which have been severely weakened by European formalism and postmodernist tendencies. "The revolution of the twenty-first century, if the arts are to survive...will be called life, reality, the pulse of the human beast."

This mini-manifesto gives you a good idea of the life mission Wolfe has given himself, in terms of proselytizing, and in terms of both his fiction and nonfiction efforts. But whatever the merits of Wolfe's arguments on the future of the arts in America, his work is ready for immediate consumption and judgment. Wolfe's first and best strength is his power of critical (and cynical) observation. He has set himself up as the ever-omniscient observer, surveying the scenery at the end of one so-called American century and the beginning of another, pointing out society's ironies and flaws and triumphs. The title of the title essay comes from Wolfe's discussion of how young people go about hooking up today, but the book also has chapters discussing the implications of neurobiology and ("Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died") the fallacies of American intellectuals ("In the Land of the Rococo Marxists") and the rise of Silicon Valley ("Two Young Men Who Went West"). A sample of Wolfe's short fiction, the novella "Ambush at Fort Bragg," appears right after the "My Three Stooges" chapter, as if to say, judge my fiction for yourself, you skeptics! For some reason, Wolfe's famous (or not-so-famous, depending on your generation) parody of The New Yorker and its editor William Shawn, published in the New York Herald Tribune in 1965 finish up the collection.

These are all amazingly fun to read. Not only are they fun, but they can be substantive and insightful as well. This is, I suppose, to be expected of Wolfe. He has a style that gives as much force to his argument as any amount of evidence does, drawing wonderful quasi-historical lessons and parallels, especially in his tale of Silicon Valley-who would have seen any connection between Grinnell, Iowa and the rise of an American legend? What you read here (or in any book review) does his skill absolutely no justice, because it is only as you actually read the stuff that you realize how cleverly crafted Wolfe's arguments can be.

His confidence and omniscience are a thrill, but they can also be somewhat annoying. Sometimes you just long to pick an argument with the man. How can he be so sure? So right? Wolfe tends to dismiss out of hand trends or ideas with which he has no affinity, especially intellectual styles related to deconstructionism and postmodernism. The temptation to ask The Question-does Tom Wolfe know what he's talking about?-is always hovering in the back of your mind. Maybe he's not totally right. Maybe he doesn't really understand the complexities of Foucault, the intricacies involved in a social phenomenon like "hooking up," or the true state of the American novel. Wolfe is such a skillful writer that it all seems to be almost beside the point. Almost. Perhaps we'll have a better idea of just how all-knowing Wolfe is when he releases his next book, a novel about college life. For now, let's just all agree that Hooking Up is one of those fun and provocative books that deserves to be read (and maybe even more than once), and that Tom Wolfe has earned the right to wear those ridiculous white suits, whether you actually agree with him or not. He's just that good.

HOOKING UP

by

Tom Wolfe

Farrar, Straus & Giroux

293 pp., $25

by

Tom Wolfe

Farrar, Straus & Giroux

293 pp., $25