- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Picador; New edition edition (12 Oct 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 033048611X
- ISBN-13: 978-0330486118
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.4 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 784,420 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Hooking Up
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Tom Wolfe's Hooking Up is an oleo of reportage, fiction, and acrimonious name calling. This last, of course, makes for the best reading. In "My Three Stooges", Wolfe reviles the three big men of American letters--Updike, Mailer and Irving--who cast aspersions on his second novel. Apparently, "the allergens for jealousy were present. Both Updike and Mailer had books out at the same time as A Man in Full, and theirs had sunk without a bubble. With Irving there was the Dickens factor". Wolfe gets in a lot of figures about what a big hit his book was with the reading public, and a few gentle reminders about other writers who were big hits of their time, little guys like Mark Twain and Tolstoy.
Equally bitter fun are his two famous 1965 satires from the New York Herald Tribune. As always, Wolfe's titles lead you a good way into the actual stories: "Tiny Mummies! The True Story of the Ruler of 43rd Street's Land of the Walking Dead!" and "Lost in the Whichy Thickets: The New Yorker". Wolfe, clothes horse of note, gets off some of his best cracks at the expense of New Yorker editor William Shawn's fashion sense: "He always seems to have on about twenty layers of clothes, about three button-up sweaters, four vests, a couple of shirts, two ties, it looks that way, a dark shapeless suit over the whole ensemble, and white cotton socks". The rest of the reported pieces are unexceptional, and while the novella, Ambush at Fort Bragg, makes the most of its setting--a Dateline-like newsmagazine--it lacks the irresistible momentum required to drag most readers into a novella. Still, it's fun to watch the author reprise his lifelong role of unlikely underdog: Between his sniping at the literary elite and his mocking of the precious New Yorker set, Tom Wolfe makes like a defender of the common man. --Claire Dederer --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Is he a journalist? One of America's best. Is he a novelist? Also one of America's best. At the age of 70, Wolfe writes like a young man eager for recognition. Hooking Up is a provocative mix of explosive essays and riveting fiction. His distinctive writing style, with its lists of arcane factoids and plenty of exclamation marks, is never dull. And it's good to see that Wolfe's peculiar talent for the catchy word and phrase (he coined 'the Right Stuff', for instance) hasn't deserted him. Particular favourites this time are digibabble, craven new world and the human anthill. The phrase hooking up is not his invention, but the teenage American term for a quick sexual encounter.His essays include an impassioned defence of pure sculpture and a history of Silicon Valley. He investigates modern theories of genetics and puts the boot nicely into the Darwinian fundamentalists. 'In the Land of the Rococo Marxists' is a rumination on the modern literary intellectual (we learn that the term intellectual was coined in 1898 by Georges Clemenceau). Politically Correctness gets short shrift here: Susan Sontag is dismissed with a curt 'Who was this woman?' Wolfe saves his most gleeful bile for the three writers who attacked him following the success of his 1998 novel A Man in Full. Referring to N Mailer, J Updike and J Irving as MY THREE STOOGES, he defends the journalistic approach to his fiction by convincingly citing his heroes Zola and Steinbeck. Barely space here to mention Wolfe's nerve-wracking novella Ambush at Fort Bragg, a taut tale of 'sting TV'. A gay soldier has been beaten to death by three Army rednecks. Wolfe explores homophobia, hypocrisy and the current state of media manipulation in the only Superpower of the early 21st Century. It had me hooked. Reviewed by Kerry Shale (Kirkus UK)
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
a very mixed bag,
By
This review is from: Hooking Up (Paperback)
As a great admirer of much of Tom wolfe's work (especially the two huge novels) I was expecting quite a lot from this collection. Unfortunately it is a very mixed and uneven read. Starting with an excellent piece on the developers of much of the high tech revolution and also containing a reasonable "novella"On the other hand we do have a lengthy reaction to the critcism of a Man in Full by other heavyweight novelists, which whilst valid points were made, sounded like a lenghty and petulant rant and was frankly very broing Other pieces touch on philosiphy, science and jounalism. Interesting to some maybe, but not always that gripping to me, although his fine sense of humour does shine through.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Always readable,
By A Customer
This review is from: Hooking Up (Hardcover)
Tom Wolfe could make the telehone directory interesting. Here he brings his exuberant prose to bear on a range of matters from the important to the trivial. A biographical essay on the founder of Intel doesn't sound a gripping prospect but Wolfe turns it into a classic story of All American success - he gives it a narrative drive focussed on an honest individual with a vision conquering over the cynical establishment in New York. A continuing obsession for Wolfe - which is there in many of these pieces - is the success of the American Dream - energetic, new, creative, democratic - against the stifling European traditions of old money, cynicism, safety, order, etc. I enjoyed that piece, and the essays on the new Darwinism - again he makes it work by personalising it into a battle between particular academics. The novella Ambush at Forth Worth is throughly enjoyable if slight. The piece in which he lays into John Irving, Norman Mailer, and John Updike is irresistable, but shows Wolfe's vanity and trivial tendencies at their worst - surely he sees how lame he sounds when bragging about the quality of his novel based on some of the reviews, and the number of sales!
1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
americana,
By A Customer
This review is from: Hooking Up (Paperback)
Unlike other reviewer,I haven`t read his two big books,but big fan of his New Journalism (read in late 70s,growing up in the U.K.). I`ll disagree with him about the `Three Stooges` piece about Man In Full...it`s the kind of literary crticism I like; gossipy,thoughtful,and educative about the tough business of writing. The rest I can live without,being all too rooted in American issues...also he seems to be turning into a bit of a P.J. O` Rourke,and some of his journalism/thought on European/British cultural issues might ne interesting.
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