A Man in Full

Rating:
Summary: Wolfe as a Mentor
Review: After spending the fall semester on a regiment of about 500 pages of text-book style, required reading per week I did not feel encumbered trying to tackle this book on a 2100 mile trip over winter break-in fact, I relished it.

As much as this is a great read, a great plot, and a great social demonstration, Tom Wolfe is able to teach the reader something remarkable-how to think. We are often taught the best way to learn is by example. Charlie, Conrad, Peepgrass, and Roger are all unique in their thought processes. And by using the multi-character, limited omniscient writing format the reader is not told how to interpret the plot, but instead is allowed to make decisions by examining the thought process of each character. In their minds, the characters are always making logical, reasoned decisions; if nothing else, the reader is able to understand.

Tom Wolfe has accomplished a marvelous masterpiece that has put me on the road to read his other works. I would recommend that you do the same.

Rating:
Summary: Self-conscious classic
Review: Both insightful and almost tediously broad. Wolfe's much-hyped novel of 1998 feigns a Stoic pride in our post-Christian world, but doesn't seem to really put the pieces together in a cohesive narrative structure. The characters get jumbled around, the myriad plots cross artificially, but the prose is strangely catchy. Worthwhile if only to see where conservatism ends up without faith.

Rating:
Summary: Very Disappointed
Review: I agree with the reviewer who concluded that all he had lost was his time.Some individual sentences ,paragraphs,and yes,even a few chapters were captivating,but all in all it was an extremely long waste of my time.

Rating:
Summary: A Full Masterpiece
Review: Takes on racial identity, materialism, arrogant capitalism, prison, revolution, homosexuality, the Southern identity, modern woman, modern man, athletics, racial politics, class warfare, modern music (one of the young men listens to the Pus Casserole but subverts the Gen-whatever stereotype by defending one of the triumvirate protagonists, Conrad, when Conrad gets fired: "He's got a wife and two kids! He was savin' up for a house!"), and many other aspects of modern life. Throw in some Greek philosophy and the rise and fall of three men, Conrad, Charlie Croker, and Roger White, and you have a winning novel.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: The biggest compliment I can give to Tom Wolfe's "A Man in Full" is acknowledging that if I somehow found myself transported 100 or 500 years into the future and wanted to give people an idea of what life in American was like at the close of the 20th century, I would just as soon give them a copy of this novel as I would a historical textbook. Writing equally well about characters at varying places along the socio-economic spectrum, Wolfe perfectly captures the mood, attitude, and cultural condition of contemporary America. Reading this book today, approximately six years after its original publish date, one almost has to look at Wolfe as a prophet, as one of the novel's major subplots involving a famous black athlete accused of raping a beautiful, rich, white girl has an eerie similarity to a current legal case involving a particular Los Angeles Lakers superstar.

Another compliment to this wonderful novel is that while many characters are obviously intended to represent certain stereotypes (the egomaniacal, overbearing multimillionaire, the trophy wife vs. the cast-aside first wife, the working class stiff who can't seem to catch a break, the wimpy middle-management type, etc), few of the characters ever appear to be anything less than fully developed 3-dimensional characters. By delving deep into the psyches of his characters, Wolfe is able to make characters who could easily have come off as clichés into oddly sympathetic figures. It is difficult to try to condense the breadth and depth of this 700+ page (hardcover edition) novel into a few short paragraphs, so I will conclude by simply stating that while this book was a successful bestseller, it seems to me that this is the sort of great work that will be even better appreciated years from now than it may have been in its own time.

Rating:
Summary: great big novel with excellent characters
Review: This being my first Tom Wolfe novel, I had no idea what to expect of A Man in Full, but was immediately grabbed by the fabulous characters Wolfe introduced. Wolfe has an amazing way of clearly illustrating, with simple words, any character, environment or situation. On the first page, Charlie Croker, the character who the plot revolves around, is introduced:

"Charlie Croker, astride his favorite Tennessee walking horse, pulled his shoulders back to make sure he was erect in the saddle and took a deep breath... Ahhhh, that was the ticket... He loved the way his mighty chest rose and fell beneath his khaki shirt and imagined that everyone in the hunting party noticed how powerfully built he was. Everybody; not just his seven guests but also his six black retainers and his young wife..."

As the book proceeds, Charlie continues to be revealed as a pompous good ole boy real estate developer who is on the verge of bankruptcy.

Wolfe also did a great job capturing life in the South, and, by the dialogue his characters used, it looks like he did his research. References to the lifestyles of college students, bankers, the affluent, prison inmates all seemed right on the mark. (Although I can only relate personally with college students.)

I found the book dull in a couple of places but overall, I really enjoyed it. Will definitely give another Tom Wolfe novel a try.

Rating:
Summary: Modern Man
Review: This novel addresses the question of modern manhood; specifically it addresses the question of how to be a man in the modern/postmodern world. Wolfe recognizes that the erosion of traditional gender, societal, and familial roles over the past century has left a vacuum of purpose in the lives of modern individuals. They can no longer look to religion, tradition, or culture to direct their decisions or to refine their character. So where can a modern man turn for advice on how to live? In desperation the characters in A Man in Full turn to the past and discover that the quest for purpose may not be a modern problem, and that the troublesome solution may have always been within their grasp.

This novel shows a different side to Tom Wolfe in that several of the characters are actually likeable. Wolfe has a reputation for poking fun at everything and everyone, but in A Man in Full the three main characters, as flawed as they are, evoke sympathy and understanding from the reader. Conrad's car trouble episode, for example, is the best representation of the frustrations of working poverty that I have ever read. As always Wolfe exhibits his signature style of defining modern American culture in great documentary detail, from the grandiose to the miniscule, with searing insight. The novel tends to be over-documentary at times which slows down the narrative, and the ending seems clipped and a bit unnatural. Overall, though, this novel is an instant classic, and proves that Wolfe is the best writer of his generation. A.


Rating:
Summary: And... The Story in Full?
Review: This unwieldy 'Brave New Journalism' left us more than bewildered. Where's the Beef? Our visit to this town turned up precious little that resembled MIF. Other reviewers made the same observation. Looks like the character this work reveals is named on the cover... why can't Mr. Wolfe bring us The Story in Full?

Rating:
Summary: A Novel in Full!
Review: To compare A Man in Full to The Bonfire of the Vanities is inevitable. Where 'Vanities' gave us sparkling gems like 'Social Xrays' and 'Lemon Tarts', A Man in Full gives us fascinating portraits of characters even at the cost of a satisfying story
(read: neat beginning, fat middle, no loose ends end).
The story deals primarily with the latter life of Charlie Croker - a real estate erstwhile tycoon who has fallen into debt. At the end he is faced with a Judasian situation - support a black sportman who is accused of date raping his friends daughter and get rid of his business debt OR side with his friend and lose everything.
The novel is peopled with characters who you can 'see' in your mind. The bankers, the young trophy wife, Charlie ( test: if the novel were a movie - who best to play Charlie Croker?), the meatpacker turned Zeus enthusiast, Martha - Charlie's ex wife, Ray Peepgass, etc... Read this book not so much for the end which seems like a balloon deflating defeatedly but for the range and colour of the characters. Nobody does it better.

Rating:
Summary: The Greatest American Writer of the Last Half-Century
Review: Tom Wolfe is without a doubt the greatest American writer of his generation. In fact, with the exception of a few luminaries like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, he is probably among the few truly great writers that the world has produced in the last fifty or so years. His books stand out like mountains compared with all of the modernist garbage of the Irvings and the Salingers. Tom Wolfe is not a writer on the level of a Dickens or a Tolstoy, though he sometimes comes pretty darn close. But compared with what has passed for literature for so long now, he really is as good as it gets.
A Man in Full is a complicated story. A very unlikely set of characters are drawn together by the alleged rape of a rich white college girl by a black athlete. Wolfe describes the entire situation with superb realism, showing you how things really work in the new millenium in America. Wolfe proves again that truth is always stranger than fiction, as he describes one absurd situation after another that can instantly be recognized as a real part of modern-day America. Anyone who is a true literature fan owes it to themselves to check out this work.