10 ms·
I have to admit, I've never read a Tom Wolfe book. Does anyone have some good recommendations?
by swampthinker 8y ago
I have to admit, I've never read a Tom Wolfe book. Does anyone have some good recommendations?
- msrpotus 8y agoI've only read Bonfire of the Vanities but it's a great taste of the conflicts and tensions brewing in 1980s New York. Unfortunately seems relevant today to explain the President's world view.
- eigenstuff 8y agoThe Right Stuff. Go. Read it. Now. Shoo.
- sizzzzlerz 8y agoWhat he said!
- hangonhn 8y agoAnother vote for this one. Also Chuck Yeager is the most badass pilot that ever piloted anything that flies. They also made a movie out of the book. It's decent but the book is amazing.
- matthewmcg 8y agoSecond the recommendations. However for a counterpoint on Yeager’s role in the NF-104 crash described at the end of the book, see this account from a trainer involved in the program: http://www.kalimera.org/nf104/stories/stories_12.html http://www.kalimera.org/nf104/stories/stories_12.html
- dctoedt 8y agoAnd this, about the investigation and a supposed cover-up of alleged pilot error by Yeager: http://www.kalimera.org/nf104/stories/stories_13.html http://www.kalimera.org/nf104/stories/stories_13.html (Although one never knows whom to believe when reading self-justifying finger pointing like this.)
- mannykannot 8y agoCo. Smith's case appears to be well-documented.
- CPAhem 8y agoThanks, that is a great link. Here's his summary: "The facts are clear. Chuck Yeager proved incapable of doing the job. He was totally outside his element. He was a natural pilot who had learned by experience and feel, but never really understood stability, just ‘sensed’ how airplanes would act, but aerodynamics and space dynamics are night and day. If he was to fail, I expected it to be outside the aerodynamics region. But not even that can excuse his accident, which was his fault, alone and was an error of bad pilot technique during normal, aerodynamic flight. His shortcoming was inability to gain and maintain the 70 degree climb angle. That required strict and delicate airplane control. No more and no less."
- geoka9 8y agoProbably the most famous (rightly so). If you like Yeager, I highly recommend reading his memoirs - it makes The Right Stuff seem like an amateur hour aviation book.
- JackFr 8y ago> it makes The Right Stuff seem like an amateur hour aviation book I doubt that. The Right Stuff is not simply a book about Yeager. And while Yeager is a fascinating and exciting man and truly a hero, Tom Wolfe is one of the greatest non-fiction stylists of the twentieth century. I would be very surprised if Chuck Yeager could write, or commission a ghost writer, with one tenth the chops of Tom Wolfe.
- geoka9 8y ago> one of the greatest non-fiction stylists Sure, if all you're looking for is style. As a person interested in aviation (and a good story), 'Yeager' is my favorite. The Right Stuff was a good experience, but I probably won't re-read it again.
- CPAhem 8y agoYes, for tech readers, The Right Stuff will be disappointing, it covers how people feel and the politics, not much about the technical side of the Mercury or X-1, X-2 or x-15 programs.
- mongol 8y agoIt is the only one I read. It is GOOD.
- macandcheese 8y agoBonfire of the Vanities, The Right Stuff, Electric Kool Aid Acid Test. Good spread of his styles.
- cs702 8y agoI read "Bonfire of the Vanities" many years ago, and thought it was fantastic -- does an incredible job of portraying the different social/ethnic/economic groups in New York during the 1980's, and how these groups view, think about, and interact with each other. Hollywood turned the book into a terrible movie that ruins the story; I would avoid the movie if you have any interest in reading the book.
- mikepurvis 8y agoIt's very funny and engaging, but I first read it young enough that I still expected that kind of story to include some kind of redemption and turn-around— in reality the characters (esp Sherman) basically spend the whole time making a bad situation worse and worse and worse, continuing to double down on their mistakes and ultimately bury themselves. Not that this is at all bad, but it was a change from what I was otherwise used to reading as a teenager.
- JackFr 8y agoIt was astonishing that the movie was so bad. The book was pure capture-the-moment 1980's New York City, and the movie captured none of that and featured Tom Hanks' worst work since Bosom Buddies.
- rhapsodic 8y ago>Hollywood turned the book into a terrible movie that ruins the story; I would avoid the movie if you have any interest in reading the book. I saw the movie when it first came out but never read the book. I thought the movie was good and couldn't understand why it got so many bad reviews. What made the book so much better?
- macintux 8y agoI can't speak to either the movie or the book, but I've found it interesting that whenever I see a movie before reading the source, I'm pretty happy with the movie, but rarely am I satisfied with the movie when I've read the book first. The subtle nuances and key moments that I love are rarely translated to the screen. It's perfectly understandable, because they're two very different forms of fiction and the movie rarely has time to be much more than the Cliff's Notes version, but it's still disappointing. When I've seen the movie first, I can appreciate it for its own sake.
- carbolite103 8y agoI might start with 'The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby' which is a collection of his essays. The first chapter of 'The Right Stuff' is worth reading by itself. The rest of the book is fascinating but drags on a bit in the last third. My favorite is 'The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test'. I haven't gotten around to reading 'Bonfire of the Vanities' however so I can't really comment on that.
- bballard 8y agoI agree, this is a great starting point. It contains a selection of articles on such diverse subjects as hot rods, Phil Spector, insomnia-inducing Las Vegas, NASCAR (and moonshining), 60s dance crazes (the mashed potato, etc), The Beatles landing at JFK, Cary Grant, Muhammad Ali, Nannies in NYC, and suits with real buttonholes. All are fantastic reads.
- JackFr 8y agoRadical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Cacthers
- vibrolax 8y agoI could never read through the passage about the arrival of the daishiki chieftain and his entourage at San Francisco City Hall without getting a side stitch, teary eyes, and a runny nose from laughing out loud. I disliked "Bonfire of the Vanities" because it was clear to me that Wolfe had fallen into self-plagiarism. It felt to me that the same fate befell Hunter Thompson and Kurt Vonnegut. It didn't take away the pleasure of reading their earlier works, but prompted me to look for different voices.
- olivermarks 8y ago'The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby' absolutely blew me away as kid in the UK - tremendous verve in Wolfe's writing, wonderfully descriptive and illuminating and contributed not insignificantly to my life long love of car culture... I agree with Calrbolite103, a very accessible starting point to Wolfe's style in short chapter/article/stories. Most of what he wrote was great IMO, most especially about the late 60's to the 80's...
- cyanbane 8y ago'A Man in Full' and 'I am Charolette Simmons' are two of my favorites. I picked up 'Kingdom of Speech' last year, but couldn't get into it. The other two though will keep you up at night. Great writing.
- pjc50 8y agoWhat did you like about Charlotte Simmons?
- teachrdan 8y agoI'm genuinely curious myself. What little I've read of it made it seem like a sensationalized account of how young women in college are imagined to behave, as per an out-of-touch old man.
- cpr 8y agoHe supposedly did a lot of research on just how the hook-up culture on campuses worked. (Don't mean that cynically or suggestively--just that he always worked hard for his source material.)
- Balgair 8y agoI read this while in college, and it was, well, horrible. The characters were terrible and unbelievable. Maybe 50 years on it will be something of a good intro to college life in the 2000s, but I disliked it.
- jacquesm 8y agoAnother vote for A Man in Full.
- maverick2007 8y agoMy under the radar favorite Tom Wolfe book is I am Charlotte Simmons. Maybe it just resonated with me since I read it going in college but I'd definitely recommend it!
- teachrdan 8y agoI'd immediately recommend Bonfire of the Vanities. It perfectly captures NYC in the 80s: the racial divides, the wealth inequality, and the many ways individuals cross race and class lines. And his vivid description of how bond traders make insane amounts of money (for the time) is unforgettable. Frankly, Bonfire is worth reading just for unforgettable lines like this one: "If a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested."
- slimshady94 8y agoI don't remember much of Bonfire, but I definitely remember a specific paragraph in which almost every noun and verb was preceded by the adjective 'f*ing'. Very vivid yet puzzling for a young kid.
- ghaff 8y agoYeah. I’m honestly not sure how well a newbie read from a space of 30 years who knows Lille of eighties NYC would stand up. But, from my perspective as someone who lived briefly in 80s Manhattan, it’s his novel that really captures a time and place.
- wallflower 8y agoTom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities" (Going broke on a million a year), p.137 "One breath of scandal, and not only would the Giscard scheme collapse but his very career would be finished! And what would he do then? I’m already going broke on a million a year! The appalling figures came popping up into his brain. Last year his income had been $980,000. But he had to pay out $21,000 a month for the $1.8 million loan he had to take out to buy the apartment... Of the $560,000 remaining of his income last year, $44,400 was required for the apartment’s monthly maintenance fee… $18,000 for heat, utilities, insurance and repairs, $6,000 for lawn and hedge cutting, $8,000 for taxes. Entertaining at home and in restaurants had come to $37,000. This was a modest sum compared to what other people spent..."
- iamben 8y agoBonfire of the Vanities. It's a wonderful book. But I'll second pretty much any of the other recommendations here as well. He's wonderful author.
- coverband 8y ago"Hooking Up"[1], an easy to digest collection of his essays, many of which are mentioned in the article or somewhere in this thread. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooking_Up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooking_Up
- jbillow2000 8y ago"The Right Stuff" is a great one.
- bradleyjg 8y agoIt depends on what you like, but having read all his full length books, I’m firmly of the opinion that A Man in Full is the best novel qua novel. In terms of craftsmenship it’s his masterpiece. On the other hand, Bonfire of the Vanities is the most Wolfian of the books—it’s the book that most of any of them could not have been written by anyone else (with honorable mention to Back to Blood).