A Man in Full

Rating:
Summary: short on content and characters
Review: Mr. Wolfe's new book is another vehicle in which his vivid descriptions and effective prose is evident. However, the characters are disappointingly lackluster. They don't inspire you or spark you enough to like or dislike them. This causes the book to drag a bit.

Most enjoyable was his character Conrad; particularly his incredible streak of misfortune and his subsequent Phoenix-like rise from the ashes. However, all-in-all the other main characters were lacking, and the ending was a letdown.

Rating:
Summary: Medium Rare with Peppercorns
Review: Wolfe has written a brave book. He must have anticipated the criticism he would receive by methodically cutting up sacred cows and serving up delectable T Bones. Politics, ambition, American culture, southern manners, literary style and Charlie Croker all go under the knife. Like it or not you don't produce a great book by playing it safe or following the rules.

Rating:
Summary: Dare I mention Mark Twain?
Review: An earlier reviewer mentioned Huck Finn, and the comparison is bold but apt. Like Huck Finn, A Man in Full satirizes some very temporal social mores through a variety of broadly drawn characters in what I believe will be a timeless fashion. Like Twain's, Wolfe's plot meanders a lot and takes some long sidetrips down backwaters that seem far removed from the central current, but compels the reader along with his incomparable wit, seamless prose and knack for dialect. You'll recall that the ending of Huck Finn is as unlikely, contrived and abrupt as anything in American fiction, yet it remains our greatest novel. I reacted against both endings originally, but I've read Huck four times and expect to return to A Man in Full.

Rating:
Summary: What a show!
Review: Like just about everyone else who read this book, I found the ending to be satisfiying . It really does feel like Wolfe got inspired and just decided to let it all hang out at the end. It's exactly how I (and many others) felt at the end of 'Bonfire.' I am sure his editors have congratulated him on that. The first 650-odd pages are wonderful, and I stayed up way too late reading them. The details and descriptions are amusing and fascinating, and his little sobriquets (e.g. 'Boys With Breasts' for the fashionable 90s female body type) are hilarious. A few other praises: (1) Wolfe may be fascinated with architectural details, but his characters all seem to know far more about it than they should - Wow!. (2) Serena, the trophy wife, is never developed as a character-- we never find out anything about her background and what lead her to be the type of woman who'll willingly sleep with a man old enough to be her grandfather. But she's not a major enough character to make this omission harmless. (3) Wolfe hates the middle class-- the DA character in 'Bonfire' and Peepgass in this novel get his greatest scorn, and in both cases it seems deserved. (Although Peepgass is seemingly redeemed at the very end.) Overall, well worth reading, but be prepared for a big bang at the end.

Rating:
Summary: Bankruptcy!
Review: Zeus? Come on. So one reviewer writes. Wolfe, however, is serious, even though Zeus and the Stoics are a contrived ending, a deus ex machina. That is what this society needs to be salvaged. Every character in the book is bankrupt, except Conrad who is saved from his by a mistaken purchase by his wife and Epictetus enters his life. We all think we are free, but we are really so bound we cannot see the one freedom we have. There are few living practicing Stoics; practitioners of Zen will understand, nevertheless. This book is fiercely sardonic; and it smashes everything most materialists will hold dear. In that regard it is Bonfire warmed over. The theme remains the same; a simple serendipity can and will end it all; so where are your values? So many readers will hate this book; others will find it amusing; others moving; and even its admirers will be put off by the deus ex machina. But the ending simply mirrors the theme--an accident will change everything. Be prepared!

Rating:
Summary: Sex was God's cosmic joke
Review: During the first several pages of the book, Mr. Wolfe appears to be taking his main character, Charles Coker, through the familiar plot, used many times in literature, of excessive greed ruining a better than average man. Charley Coker is a perfect character to be a victim of greed in the classical plot. He is a man's man, a football hero who has attacked life as he did football. Enormous success in real estate has given him a fairy-tale material standard of living. As you would expect, Charlie's excesses are the foundation of his demise. Just as I was settling in to enjoying this story of greed and its excesses, another, much more interesting thesis began to emerge. Not only was I reading about the destruction of Charley Coker's life, but also the similtaneous destruction of Raymond Peepgass, Conrad Hensley and Fareek Fanon. Greed no longer was the fabric holding this story together. A third of the way through the book Mr. Wolfe gives his first hint at the real thesis when Raymond Peepgass concludes that, "Truly, sex was God's cosmic joke". Mr. Wolfe's treatment of his thesis is subtle, so subtle, that I'll bet most readers miss it, however, the book takes on a new vitality when read from the point of view that sex is "God's cosmic joke". From that point on the lives of a white rich man, two poor white men, and a talented black man are destroyed by sex. Not by perverted, out-of-control sex, but the everyday roll-in-the-hay type of sex. The kind of sex that no man can find a rational reason to resist. This sex, while lethal and destructive to men, turns women into predators and beneficiaries. As an aside, I believe really good fiction must have a central thesis that has universal application. Using his characters and plot, the author supports and builds his thesis. Mr. Wolfe has presented his thesis so well that every mature male reader will have to stop and reminisce about the many times they have suffered the consequences of "God's cosmic joke". If you have any doubts the thesis is real and universal, ask President Bill Clinton.

Rating:
Summary: As Good As It Gets
Review: I don't wish to make a proclamation that this is the "best American book ever written," nor do I want to complain about an "inadequate" ending. All I can say about this book is that, from the first chapter's over-the-top description of the hunt at Turpemtime, "A Man In Full" consistently held my attention. (I'm sorry to say that I can't say the same about "Bonfire.") The sheer unfortunate reality of Wolfe's writing is, as many will tell you, a precise color photograph taken then and there in 1998, complete with polarizing filter and an all-too-true vibrancy. It's the kind of book that might be depressing to read soon after its publication and yet evokes quite a few biting, almost nostalgic memories of those infamously coarse upwardly-mobile days of yore. And while I am a mere forty years old and I am myself caught in the middle of that web, it rings so, so true. Upward Mobility, this seems to accurately capture the era that I failed to understand but am now sure exists just as Wolfe has said.

And yet "A Man In Full" is by no means historical fiction. Rather, our good friend Tom manages to do what I've always maintained a good satirist should do: Keep a perfect distance. Wolfe manages to edge close enough to his characters to dig into their minds and show us what's inside -- and yet he stays far enough away that he can poke fun and them with his usual slightly-supercilious air.

This perfect distance of his seems to be what ensures a constantly entertaining read. Seldom do the often-lengthy descriptions bore the reader; such minor allusions as that to the "tub and shower stall module -- module! -- a single molded unit that deflected slightly when he stepped into the tub" remain startling real, making the abrupt ending not at all unsatisfying but rather entirely appropriate and understandable; with literature this interesting, why would one ask for a happy ending?

Rating:
Summary: Atlanta in Full
Review: Take a nice starting plot and an interesting lead character, and you have a book that traps you. Later in the story, it actually turns that the author's character Conrad is wandering about in search of a moral lesson.

Hilarious characters make the demographic rifts as smooth as a truck on a truck lot. I quickly became enamored of the lesson from the Job-like character that abandoned his family and then spread the word to the lead character, who then left his family, to preach the word of Zeus.

If it sounds great, its because it is. Re-read this book and venture into this story of deep characters.

Rating:
Summary: All-Engrosing; All-Encompassing
Review: I'm almost done with 'A Man in Full' (on page seven hundred and something), and I have to disagree with the negative reviews. This book is a crowd scene that hooks you repeatedly. Each chapter seems to resume an abandoned thread, wrapping you back up in the action within the first sentence every time. Despite the largeness of the theme (and of the book), we're made to feel a sort of short-story immediacy right up to the end. The Freaknik scene from the 1998 spring break becomes a sort of character itself, threading its way through lives, symbolizing a dying culture being choked and obscured in an information junkheap, a needle in a haystack. The effect is chilling, and well worth the read. Bonfire was great, I'll grant you that. But this book is ambitious beyond anything I've ever read. It's Wolfe's stab at the Great American Novel, no doubt. And his vision is all-encompassing in a way that Hemingway, Steinbeck and Faulker couldn't achieve. Buy it.

Also recommended: The Sun Also Rises;The Grapes of Wrath;The Sound and the Fury

Rating:
Summary: It's great when ambitous books succeed.
Review: Tackling big subjects in epic length as Tom Wolfe does here can be precarious: fail, and the failure will be much worse than if something much less grandiose was attempted in the first place. Thankfully, Wolfe succeeds in fine fashion here, presenting a panorama of America in the 1990s that was hard to put down. It seems as if those people who didn't like the book simply just didn't understand it. (hint -- look up the word "satire" and then re-read it).