Hooking Up [Paperback]

Tom Wolfe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 12, 2001

In Hooking Up, Tom Wolfe ranges from coast to coast observing 'the lurid carnival actually taking place in the mightiest country on earth in the year 2000.' From teenage sexual manners and mores to fundamental changes in the way human beings now regard themselves thanks to the hot new fields of genetics and neuroscience; from his legendary profile of William Shawn, editor of The New Yorker (first published in 1965), to a remarkable portrait of Bob Noyce, the man who invented Silicon Valley, Tom Wolfe the master of reportage and satire returns in vintage form.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Tom Wolfe's name is now so well known that the cover of his new collection bears just that: Tom Wolfe's name. No title, no picture, just the name, with an elegant design twining through it. Flip the thing on its side and you'll find that its title, Hooking Up, gives little idea of its function. But investigation soon reveals an oleo of reportage, fiction, and acrimonious name-calling. The latter, 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 times--little guys like 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, clotheshorse 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 the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Arch, vengeful and incisive as ever, the standard bearer for the chattering classes is back, this time with a collection of nine previously published essays, one new one and a reprinted novella. Ranging from the spectacular innovations of neuroscience to the preposterous horrors of the contemporary art world to a bare-knuckled assessment of the critical reception to his novel A Man in Full (an essay that appears for the first time in this collection, and that will set tongues wagging), the pieces run the gamut of Wolfe's signature obsessions. Fans of his character sketches will relish "Two Young Men Who Went West," a revelatory profile of Robert Noyce, a key innovator of the microchip who founded Intel in 1968, where the midwestern Congregationalist values he shared with his former mentor, William Shockley (founder of the original Silicon Valley startup, Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory), grew into a business philosophy that's now so pervasive it's practically in the ether. Also included are Wolfe's infamous, irreverent profiles of New Yorker editors Harold Ross and William Shawn, originally published in 1968. Lopped off of Wolfe's most recent fiction opus, the novella "Ambush in Fort Bragg" concerns a "TV sting" run amok, and sits easily next to his journalism. However, Wolfe's meticulous eye for detail shows signs of jaundice in his hectoring anti-Communist tirades and in the title essay, which turns a snide backward glance on the turn of the millennium. Still, his fans will find plenty of evidence that Wolfe remains willing to plunge into "the raw, raucous, lust-soaked rout that throbs with amped-up octophonic typanum all around [him]" and thatDespecially in his nonfictionDhe can still grab the brass ring. Agent, Janklow & Nesbitt Associates. (Oct..--" and thatDespecially in his nonfictionDhe can still grab the brass ring. Agent, Janklow & Nesbitt Associates. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Picador; First Edition edition (October 12, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312420234
• ISBN-13: 978-0312420239
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (70 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #210,694 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Tom Wolfe is the author of more than a dozen books, among them such contemporary classics as The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, The Bonfire of the Vanities, and A Man in Full. A native of Richmond, Virginia, he earned his B.A. at Washington and Lee University and a Ph.D. in American studies at Yale. He lives in New York City.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not dead yet: a satirist outlasts just about all his targets, April 2, 2001

By 

The Sanity Inspector (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hooking Up (Hardcover)

After twenty years, Tom Wolfe is back with another collection of essays of social criticism. Throughout much of the Eighties and Nineties, it seemed that he had been overtaken by the changing times, as every satirist eventually must be. The sprayer of irony one day finds himself drowing in it. His two smash novels pointed to new directions for him.

But here is this grab bag of old and new material, picking right up where his last such, 1980's _In Our Time_, left off. He didn't include any of his very witty caricatures here, though-too bad. One of the essays, "My Three Stooges", a barrel-roll around his literary competition, would have been a good forum for them.

That piece, "My Three Stooges" is a terrific rejoinder to his critics in thenortheasternliberalliteraryestablishment. The writers who inhabit the Long Island-Martha's Vinyard-rural New England triangle have been so increasingly irrelevant to the rest of American life that it's all the New York literary taste-makers can do to keep them afloat. This may be the knock-out blow for them, as Wolfe touts the vital but neglected role of reportage in bringing the parade of American life successfully to print.

Wolfe's style has remained rather static over the years. He still uses his familiar panoply of ellipses, italics, and repetition, though the pages are not as annoyingly snowy with them as in his earlier days. Mysteriously, he recycled a _lot_ of snappy turns of phrase from earlier books. I mean, verbatim passages of description, "gold chains twinkling in his chest hairs," "hung their hides over the edge," "Please God, don't let me look old," to list a very few, all made memorable appearances in his work decades ago. Plus, the use of tell-tale brand names as punchlines makes some older essays sound stale, as those brands have lost their cachet or stigma over the years.

The collection has its strengths and weaknesses, of course, like all collections of anything do. _The Right Stuff_ notwithstanding, Wolfe is not a science writer, and his two essays on sociobiology here feel like oversimplifications. There's surely room for satire in that field, but this doesn't feel like his best work. The horselaugh at _The New Yorker_'s expense is a cute souvenir of Sixties New York, but no more than that. And "Ambush at Fort Bragg" confused a lot of people, perhaps because the story didn't tell them what to think about the events. Just enjoy the characterizations, then. A more detailed acknowledgements section would be useful, showing when and where these pieces are from.

But "Two Men Who Went West" is a very interesting tale about the birth of Silicon Valley and its unique corporate culture. "In the Land of the Rococo Marxists" is a richly deserved, exquisitely drawn out sneer at pampered academic radicals, and how they have coped with their side losing the Cold War. "The Invisible Artist" is a surprisingly affectionate account of the career of Frederick Hart. And the introduction to the book, "Hooking Up" is vintage Wolfe, modern mores seen through the uncomprehending eyes of a deftly-detailed ordinary joe.

So everything old is new again! The reporter-satirist-novelist-reporter still has a sharp eye for the current scene, even if his style is flash-frozen in time. A must for Wolfe fans.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An Uneven Collection, November 29, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Hooking Up (Hardcover)

OK, let me begin by saying that Tom Wolfe is one of my favorite authors. He does his homework, has an eye for detail and an exquisite (ooh...there's that word!) way of bending the English language to his purposes. So, I'm a fan.

However, I found "Hooking Up" to be less than I expected or hoped for. Other reviewers have commented on the dubious relevance of some of the essays, and I agree. The piece on the NY Times was well-written, as usual, but I just didn't care about the topic. It seemed to be a little too shrill, a little too self-serving...but in the end I just didn't care.

"Ambush At Fort Bragg" was deadly in its aim, but the sexual content bordered on pornographic (I say this even as I admit that it fit the context of the story) and, frankly, I'm just a tad weary of such things.

Mr. Wolfe is at his best when he takes aim at current social, philosophic and scientific issues, and dissects them, layer by layer, exposing the good with the bad. He does this in a number of essays in this collection, and that is the saving grace for this book. If you're a Tom Wolfe fan, by all means - buy the book. If you're not familiar with his work but want to be, there are better choices.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wolfe is the Mac-Daddy of American Greatness, June 30, 2002

By 

Hunter Baker "Hunter Baker" (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hooking Up (Hardcover)

If you love living in America, if you're thrilled by the raw courage of entrepeneurial effort that explodes into success, and if you refuse to accept the center-left line America's liberal elite wants to hand you, then Tom Wolfe is your go-to guy. He's hard-working, brilliant, and writes like a man playing a burning piano.

Although many know him best for his novels like "Bonfire of the Vanities" and "A Man in Full", you're missing his best work if you don't read the essay collections like "Hooking Up". In this volume, we get the true story behind the birth of Silicon Valley, a tale of a great artist no one knows because he possesses actual skill, a novella skewering the television news magazines, and several other gems.

If you have a Wolfe collection, add this book to it. If you don't have a Wolfe collection, start one!