I have wanted to read another Tom Wolfe novel ever since I read The Electric Acid Kool Aid Test in 1970. That novel was about the "Merry Pranksters" who rode a day glo painted bus across America holding happenings in which they served Kool Aid laced with LSD. Wolfe's book helped explain to me why I was doing acid at the time. And I needed the explaining, believe me. Way back then, that novel, hit me between the eyes! This one doesn't hit me between the eyes, but it definitely grabbed me by the shoulder.
A few years ago, I tried his novel, Bonfire of the Vanities but it didn't grab me.
A reviewer from goodreads summarizes the book:
A Man in Full
by Tom Wolfe
The setting is Atlanta, Georgia — a racially mixed, late-century boomtown full of fresh wealth and wily politicians. The protagonist is Charles Croker, once a college football star, now a late-middle-aged Atlanta conglomerate king whose outsize ego has at last hit up against reality. Charlie has a 29,000 acre quail-shooting plantation, a young and demanding second wife, and a half-empty office complex with a staggering load of debt.
Meanwhile, Conrad Hensley, idealistic young father of two, is laid off from his job at the Croker Global Foods warehouse near Oakland and finds himself spiraling into the lower depths of the American legal system.
And back in Atlanta, when star Georgia Tech running back Fareek “the Canon” Fanon, a homegrown product of the city’s slums, is accused of date-raping the daughter of a pillar of the white establishment, upscale black lawyer Roger White II is asked to represent Fanon and help keep the city’s delicate racial balance from blowing sky-high.
Networks of illegal Asian immigrants crisscrossing the continent, daily life behind bars, shady real estate syndicates — Wolfe shows us contemporary America with all the verve, wit, and insight that have made him our most admired novelist. Charlie Croker’s deliverance from his tribulations provides an unforgettable denouement to the most widely awaited, hilarious and telling novel America has seen in ages — Tom Wolfe’s most outstanding achievement to date.
Meanwhile, Conrad Hensley, idealistic young father of two, is laid off from his job at the Croker Global Foods warehouse near Oakland and finds himself spiraling into the lower depths of the American legal system.
And back in Atlanta, when star Georgia Tech running back Fareek “the Canon” Fanon, a homegrown product of the city’s slums, is accused of date-raping the daughter of a pillar of the white establishment, upscale black lawyer Roger White II is asked to represent Fanon and help keep the city’s delicate racial balance from blowing sky-high.
Networks of illegal Asian immigrants crisscrossing the continent, daily life behind bars, shady real estate syndicates — Wolfe shows us contemporary America with all the verve, wit, and insight that have made him our most admired novelist. Charlie Croker’s deliverance from his tribulations provides an unforgettable denouement to the most widely awaited, hilarious and telling novel America has seen in ages — Tom Wolfe’s most outstanding achievement to date.
The thing that grabbed me about this novel was his depiction of male egos in scramble, fight and tear each other to pieces in search of money, power, status, sex. The scrambles take place at 3 levels of society: among the rich, the middle class and among the inmates of a prison. It's the same brutal game, no matter what level it's being played at.
The "unforgettable denouement" of the book - I had to look the word up: it means "the final part of a narrative in which matters are explained or resolved" - involves looking to God for the answers. But the God who is looked to is Zeus and the avenue of looking is via the ancient Roman Stoic philosophers. On one level, the ending is kind of silly and unbelievable. But it makes you ask, "If the Stoics don't have the answer for the out of control ego, who does?"
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