Through the eyes of the Wolfe man

Press, 21 October 1989, Page 28

Through the eyes of the Wolfe man

The Bonfire of the Vanities. By Tom Wolfe. Picador, 1988. 781 pp. $15.95 (paperback). The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. By Tom Wolfe. Transworld, 1989. 368 pp. $14.95 (paperback). The Right Stuff. By Tom Wolfe. Corgi, 1989. 364 pp. $14.95 (paperback). ’ (Reviewed by Luke Strongman) Tom Wolfe’s first novel and eleventh book, “Bonfire of the Vanities,” has received a lot of attention since it was first published last year. Now out in paperback, this 781-page novel attempts to hold up a mirror to the New York of the 1980 s, and reveal a structure that is desperately trying to avoid looking itself in the face, let alone the eye.

Admirers of Wolfe’s unique and frequently extended acid-tongue will already have discovered that the metamorphosis from journalist extraordinaire to novelist verite has been a seemingly effortless and entertaining step. Wolfe has created some great characters, from the spitting and diminutive Judge Kovitsky who lurks in a corner of the novel like a possessed frown in socks, to the twofaced, frequently half-assed, and perpetually legless journalist, cartooncharacter of Peter Fallow, who staggers into the jungle of New York scandal from the inside of a Vodka southside.

Enough to say that Fallow’s name spelt backwards is Wollaf, and that

Wolfe gives perhaps the best and most convincing account of the alcoholinduced headache that has ever been written.

Tom Wolfe’s New York will not go away with three or even three hundred aspirin, and seemingly in the society he portrays, the only people who keep their heads are those fortunate enough to be born with nothing in them. Comparing “Bonfire” with the earlier “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” says less about the changes in Tom wolfe’s writing than it does about the societies he writes about. Somehow Kesey’s pioneering expeditions into the planet L.S.D., watched over by the then fatherly figure of Neal “Dean Moriarty” Cassidy, seems a lot more user-friendly than Wolfe or Wollaf’s New York of today. It just depends what sort of pyre you want to burn on. Seemingly in those days, it all basically came down to whether you were “on the bus or off the bus”; nowadays you’d be lucky to get a free squint at the timetable. Perhaps Wolfe’s ultimate message is that we would all be better off walking. “The Right Stuff” has also been added to the recent range of Wolfe in paperback. This account of cold-war test-pilot flying and the ascendancy of N.A.S.A. and the astronauts is amazing. Truly. He describes how the “original seven” — the astronauts — were the only thing bigger than the "fab four” in the star-struck, popular eye of the 60s. The incredible lifestyle of the

early astronauts is described in its own language with Tom wolfing it up along the way. Apparently the pilots drag each other off on something he calls the “invisible ziggurat” of flying — the tip of which only a few can-stand, the true certifiable possessors of the Right Stuff. The aim of these pilots, the true brothers, the “flying jocks,” was to demonstrate their ability to fly in the face of being “burned beyond recognition” and “stretch the envelope” of a jet’s capablities. According to Wolfe, the major concern of the early astronauts was not having 100 tons of rocket fuel ignited under them (if they could handle the thermometers they could handle anything); nor was it the political and patriotic implications of the space-race with the Russians. Apparently what really humbled the astronauts was the issue of whether

they were pilots still, “flying jocks,” or merely “monkeys in a suite,” “spam in a can,” and therefore inelligible for the Right Stuff.

Behind all this, etched in the heavens, is the almost mystical figure of Chuck Yeager, the original John Wayne of the skies, blower of the supersonic trumpet, and the most righteous member of the brotherhood of the rightly stuffed. Wolfe has a uniquely successful and exciting style of journalism. In “The Right Stuff’ he makes some important observations. One such being that the “flying jocks” were heroes in the old (this-space-ain’t-big-enough-for-the-two-of-us) sense in an era that is characterised as the breeding ground of the anti-hero (this space is nothing). Also, with their husbands flying the astral gauntlet on the television screens of millions, and the news teams gauging their thoughts with such astute and challenging questions as, “What will be the first meal you will cook for him?” Wolfe gives the perspective of the astronauts’ wives. With both parties apparently at risk of “burning beyond recognition,” it is not hard to see who the real heroines were.

Wolfe’s writing varies from the informative, to the entertaining, to pop-psychology. He describes rather than explains. Perhaps here “The Right Stuff’ falls just short of the astral plane. Wolfe does little to account for the anomaly that was the space-race of the cold-war as a whole. Why did it occur in an era which has characteristically looked in on itself?

A-Okay, “The Right Stuff’ is in this sense a stab in the dark. But there again,- everything looks beautiful from up here.