Customer Reviews

Hooking Up

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Wolfe's unique position as the resident elf of American letters has allowed him the licence to expose the mountains of hypocrisy and hype that form the fabric of our modern and now 'post modern' society, with out ever having had to reveal a point of view of his own. Most of his work is presented with a raconteur's relish. It moves just slightly outside and slightly behind the Next 'New' Thing, taking voyeuristic glee in adjudicating its pretensions and contradictions. The impression, though, is often that of a dilettante rather than a crusader, a writer with gifted perception but lacking a sense of mission. But in his older years he has come on a cause that he has approached with some passion. The state of the novel and his own contribution to it.

The centre piece in these essays is the one dealing with his 'Three Stooges', Norman Mailer, John Irving, John Updike. For this he has abandoned all of his trademark irony and journalistic distance. The scathing critiques by America's literary elders on his last novel. 'A Man in Full' has left him on full counter attack.. That is all the more magnetic because the claims on both sides are nothing less than the mantle of Dickens, Zola, Tolstoy, Twain and the future of the novel as realism or aestheticism-- Wolfe's resonant social, morally definitive panorama or aestheticism's metaphysics, ethereal 'exquisiteness' and subjective ethics. Of course this strain has its own illustrious champions, Melville, Henry James, Proust, Joyce. His case is interesting, but inconclusive, as to why these two forms can't coexist. He is clearly sensitive to all the barbs from the literary 'aristocracy' and his essays are personal and at times bitter. Still, the spectacle of these over bred egos taking on one another in the media spotlight must have been irresistible to Wolfe, even if he is one of the participants. Surely he must be able to see a little of his own antiheroes Sherman McCoy and Charlie Croker, though, in all their puffed up self righteousness, in his own indignity.

The wide ranging social essays and a novella are braced by his articulate, robust language. One is left with the suspicion, however, that his carefully chosen representations cover issues that are much more complex and nuanced than he gives credit. Anecdotes of such self contained sophistry as post structural literary criticism or 'socio-biology' are easy to lampoon, but a deeper look at the eschatology of middle American culture is never attempted. Wolfe inserts himself as a traditionalist, but in an intellect that is really much too sharp, flexible and transient to represent Middle America. The cast of characters would provide some colourful academic contrasts for any Park Avenue soiree, however. That is where Wolfe shines, as an intellectual vagabond, in an epoch that is providing no end of entertaining subject matter.

OK, let me begin by saying that Tom Wolfe is one of my favorite authors. He does his homework, has an eye for detail and an exquisite (ooh...there's that word!) way of bending the English language to his purposes. So, I'm a fan.

However, I found "Hooking Up" to be less than I expected or hoped for. Other reviewers have commented on the dubious relevance of some of the essays, and I agree. The piece on the NY Times was well-written, as usual, but I just didn't care about the topic. It seemed to be a little too shrill, a little too self-serving...but in the end I just didn't care.

"Ambush At Fort Bragg" was deadly in its aim, but the sexual content bordered on pornographic (I say this even as I admit that it fit the context of the story) and, frankly, I'm just a tad weary of such things.

Mr. Wolfe is at his best when he takes aim at current social, philosophic and scientific issues, and dissects them, layer by layer, exposing the good with the bad. He does this in a number of essays in this collection, and that is the saving grace for this book. If you're a Tom Wolfe fan, by all means - buy the book. If you're not familiar with his work but want to be, there are better choices.

13 of the 14 short stories contained in "Hooking Up" have been previously published, making this collection for novice Wolfe readers a must. "Ambush at Fort Bragg" is magnificent. But the only new essay in the collection reads flat, and is not in the league of "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," and "Bonfire of the Vanities."

Mr. Wolfe's essays in "Hooking Up" address the astonishing, vibrant, and varied landscape of the richest, most powerful, and most energized nation in the world.

His satire bombards many targets: wealth, sex, art, The New Yorker, and fashion. Spurred by his recent monetary success with a "Man in Full," he even takes revenge upon the hallowed trinity of Mailer, Updike, and Irving.

Mr. Wolfe brilliantly targets (yet again) the total unimportance of academic criticism and modern art to the American century. Most interestingly, he delves into the ongoing quest to understand the human genetic code. As always, his satire and wit mask a respect for hard work, common people, and moral behavior.

A very nice picture of the ongoing American saga.

This book has a lot of good stuff in it. My favorite observation of Wolfe's, though, is that for poetry to be acceptable in literary circles these days, it has to be obscure, oblique, and hard to understand. Poets are upset these days that they aren't famous like Robert Frost was. Well, that's why. Wolfe is refreshing, to say the least.

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. 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.

Harriet Klausner

One of the greatest tragedies of contemporary letters has been the way in which Tom Wolfe has lost his veneer of cool over the last thirty years, as he's become not only a member but a celebrant of the Establishment he once observed cynically from the sidelines. There's a glimpse of what made Wolfe the most important satirist of his generation in his splendidly funny profile of William Shawn, "Tiny Mummies!," but that was written over a generation ago.

Most of his more recent pieces in this collection show instead how deeply out of it he remains today. "In the Land of Rococo Marxists" is almost an embarrassment: Wolfe here fulminates against academic faddishness, but the fads he singles out for scorn were relevant twenty years ago. He seems oblivious to the fact that Derrida has been largely passé for years--it's like complaining about contemporary music and heaping particular vitriol on the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. The response to his critics (John Irving, John Updike, and Norman Mailer) seems similarly out to lunch: he attacks them for qualities they don;t even possess, and seems to negelect how similar they are to him in their fictional styles. It's sad to see someone who once made such a name for himself as being positioned on the cutting edge still attempt to claim that position, but wind up instead seeming blithely unhip.

Most of the essays here are entertaining and often thought provoking. Wolfe has a keen eye for many aspects of American life.

I can not give it 5 stars, though. For someone who makes his living observing others Mr. Wolfe's skin is thin when he is put under the microscope himself. His disdain for Updike is ridiculous when one considers Updike's fiction is a graceful Michael Jordan flying dunk and Wolfe's is still based on descriptions of sounds and accents being spelled out in ALL CAP phonetics on every other page. This collection would have been better if he kept his own personal vendettas out, and stuck with what he does best.

I'd read a lot of these pieces in their original magazine form. Some of them have been updated, and I enjoyed reading the updates (the piece on Robert Noyce and Intel has been updated since its 1983 publication in "Esquire"). Some had been published before that I had NOT read. I'd been dying to read the piece on the "New Yorker" after reading ABOUT it. And I really loved it!! The "New Yorker" is so revered, it's delightful to see Wolfe give it some well-deserved and high-spirited criticism. And then some pieces are published here for the first time (I loved the "Rococo Marxism" piece.) "My Three Stooges" does smack a bit of "me thinketh thou doth protest too much", because Updike, Mailer and Irving had a point. (A MAN IN FULL was a flawed novel). But they are more deserving of Wolfe's criticsim than he is of theirs. I didn't need to read "Ambush at For Bragg" again, having read it in "Rolling Stone." But the "re-runs" were worth having, if it meant having the new and unread stuff. Wolfe is one of the greatest things we've got going in the writing world, and proof of that fact are in these pages.