Book Description

In Hooking Up, Tom Wolfe ranges from coast to coast observing 'the lurid carnival actually taking place in the mightiest country on earth in the year 2000.' From teenage sexual manners and mores to fundamental changes in the way human beings now regard themselves thanks to the hot new fields of genetics and neuroscience; from his legendary profile of William Shawn, editor of The New Yorker (first published in 1965), to a remarkable portrait of Bob Noyce, the man who invented Silicon Valley, Tom Wolfe the master of reportage and satire returns in vintage form.

Amazon.com

Tom Wolfe's name is now so well known that the cover of his new collection bears just that: Tom Wolfe's name. No title, no picture, just the name, with an elegant design twining through it. Flip the thing on its side and you'll find that its title, Hooking Up, gives little idea of its function. But investigation soon reveals an oleo of reportage, fiction, and acrimonious name-calling. The latter, of course, makes for the best reading. In "My Three Stooges," Wolfe reviles the three big men of American letters--Updike, Mailer, and Irving--who cast aspersions on his second novel. Apparently, "the allergens for jealousy were present. Both Updike and Mailer had books out at the same time as A Man in Full, and theirs had sunk without a bubble. With Irving there was the Dickens factor." Wolfe gets in a lot of figures about what a big hit his book was with the reading public, and a few gentle reminders about other writers who were big hits of their times--little guys like Twain and Tolstoy.

Equally bitter fun are his two famous 1965 satires from the New York Herald Tribune. As always, Wolfe's titles lead you a good way into the actual stories: "Tiny Mummies! The True Story of the Ruler of 43rd Street's Land of the Walking Dead!" and "Lost in the Whichy Thickets: The New Yorker." Wolfe, clotheshorse of note, gets off some of his best cracks at the expense of New Yorker editor William Shawn's fashion sense: "He always seems to have on about twenty layers of clothes, about three button-up sweaters, four vests, a couple of shirts, two ties, it looks that way, a dark shapeless suit over the whole ensemble, and white cotton socks." The rest of the reported pieces are unexceptional, and while the novella Ambush at Fort Bragg makes the most of its setting--a Dateline-like newsmagazine--it lacks the irresistible momentum required to drag most readers into a novella. Still, it's fun to watch the author reprise his lifelong role of unlikely underdog: between his sniping at the literary elite and his mocking of the precious New Yorker set, Tom Wolfe makes like a defender of the common man. --Claire Dederer

From Publishers Weekly

Arch, vengeful and incisive as ever, the standard bearer for the chattering classes is back, this time with a collection of nine previously published essays, one new one and a reprinted novella. Ranging from the spectacular innovations of neuroscience to the preposterous horrors of the contemporary art world to a bare-knuckled assessment of the critical reception to his novel A Man in Full (an essay that appears for the first time in this collection, and that will set tongues wagging), the pieces run the gamut of Wolfe's signature obsessions. Fans of his character sketches will relish "Two Young Men Who Went West," a revelatory profile of Robert Noyce, a key innovator of the microchip who founded Intel in 1968, where the midwestern Congregationalist values he shared with his former mentor, William Shockley (founder of the original Silicon Valley startup, Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory), grew into a business philosophy that's now so pervasive it's practically in the ether. Also included are Wolfe's infamous, irreverent profiles of New Yorker editors Harold Ross and William Shawn, originally published in 1968. Lopped off of Wolfe's most recent fiction opus, the novella "Ambush in Fort Bragg" concerns a "TV sting" run amok, and sits easily next to his journalism. However, Wolfe's meticulous eye for detail shows signs of jaundice in his hectoring anti-Communist tirades and in the title essay, which turns a snide backward glance on the turn of the millennium. Still, his fans will find plenty of evidence that Wolfe remains willing to plunge into "the raw, raucous, lust-soaked rout that throbs with amped-up octophonic typanum all around [him]" and thatDespecially in his nonfictionDhe can still grab the brass ring. Agent, Janklow & Nesbitt Associates. (Oct..--" and thatDespecially in his nonfictionDhe can still grab the brass ring. Agent, Janklow & Nesbitt Associates. (Oct.)

From Booklist

Wolfe-man steps up to bat again, this time with a collection of essays. Although these essays are not as fully provocative as his novels, they are still quite demonstrative of his feistiness. One of the most inciting is "My Three Stooges," in which Wolfe discusses the writing of and critical and popular response to his novel A Man in Full. Wolfe takes out after three eminent novelists--John Updike, Norman Mailer, and John Irving--who had bad things to say about this particular work. He refers to them as his three stooges, a stooge being "literally a straight man who feeds lines to the lead actor in a play. My three stooges were so upset by A Man in Full, they were feeding me lines I couldn't have dreamed up if they had asked me to write the script for them." In another essay, "Hooking Up," Wolfe ponders America's obsession with youth and American youth's sexual precocity. The early part of the Silicon Valley story is told in "Two Young Men Who Went West." These and other essays are not simply brief exercises but well-developed, factual, and informative narratives on a wide range of cultural topics. Appearing here, too, is a novella, "Ambush at Fort Bragg," about a military gay-bashing incident and how a TV show is investigating it; the novella is not any less pungent a piece of writing than the essays. Expect demand for this book by a very popular or at least much-talked-about author.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Brad Hooper

From Library Journal

In this audiobook, Wolfe (The Bonfire of the Vanities) chronicles the "here and now." He reports on everything from the creation of the Intel computer chip, the sexual activities of today's teenager, the definition of art over the ages, an in-depth look at the new field of genetics and neuroscience, and the dissolution of the human soul, as well as many other "now" topics. In fact, Wolfe takes potentially boring subjects and turns them into a verbose tour de force. That said, his style of writing is awe inspiring. Read wonderfully by the author and actor Ron Rifkin, this is highly recommended.DMarty D. Evensvold, Arkansas City P.L., KS

About Author

Tom Wolfe is the author of more than a dozen books, among them such contemporary classics as The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, The Bonfire of the Vanities, and A Man in Full. A native of Richmond, Virginia, he earned his B.A. at Washington and Lee University and a Ph.D. in American studies at Yale. He lives in New York City.

Book Dimension:

length: (cm)17.8 　　　 　　　　　 　 width:(cm)11.1