Tom (2011) Paperback, A Man In Full by Wolfe

Great character development. Held my interest from the very beginning to the end. Actually picked up a hard copy at a friend's just to look at, but then liked the first ten pages I bought it for myself on my Kindle.

I read the book and led two discussion groups. I found the book to be excellent with a fine analysis of the poverty problem and prison.

I was a little disappointed in the physical quality of the volume received, since I believed it would be like new, but it was well used. I wanted it as a replacement for my copy that had been marked by me, then borrowed and never returned.

The book starts off with great premises, and reading about the rich and famous lifestyle is entertaining, but the book rapidly spirals down to an Atlanta social register history, and then completely goes flat. It looked like Wolfe decided he had enough pages and tied up all loose ends preemptively with no imagination or surprises.

The provider would not return the book as I wanted original printing and this was the 3rd printing.

I sent the book back and it was returned due to the provider not being there.

They would not accept a return.

Very disappointed---This is a zero rating

Intriguing, tedious, humorous, frustrating- these four words describe my experience with A Man in Full, a light version of Bonfire of the Vanities and a bit of a preview of I Am Charlotte Simmons. What turned out to be two stories, Roger Too White's representation Fareek Fannon and businessman Charlie Croker's descent into bankruptcy and humiliation turned into many, many stories, some good, some lukewarm. The prison scenes were, at times, too painful either in the violence (Pocahontas' bleeding) or dialogue (Five-O's pidgin English). Other stories of little interest to me were Martha's aerobics classes and her quest to find something more meaningful after her divorce; Mutt going to solitary; Sirja taking Peepgas to court. All good material for short stories or separate novels, but too much when thrown together.

Right now, I am at the part where Conrad meets Mai through Kenny. (No spoilers, don't worry!) I am going to put the book away for a few days, because it's unenjoyable when you read it straight through.

PS- Charlotte Simmons is better than A Man.

Intriguing, tedious, humorous, frustrating- these four words describe my experience with A Man in Full, a light version of Bonfire of the Vanities and a bit of a preview of I Am Charlotte Simmons. What turned out to be two stories, Roger Too White's representation Fareek Fannon and businessman Charlie Croker's descent into bankruptcy and humiliation turned into many, many stories, some good, some lukewarm. The prison scenes were, at times, too painful either in the violence (Pocahontas' bleeding) or dialogue (Five-O's pidgin English). Other stories of little interest to me were Martha's aerobics classes and her quest to find something more meaningful after her divorce; Mutt going to solitary; Sirja taking Peepgas to court. All good material for short stories or separate novels, but too much when thrown together.

Right now, I am at the part where Conrad meets Mai through Kenny. (No spoilers, don't worry!) I am going to put the book away for a few days, because it's unenjoyable when you read it straight through.

PS- Charlotte Simmons is better than A Man.

Seinfeld aficionados will understand the reference in my review's title. Tom Wolfe's writing is astonishingly good. Brilliant. Infused with detail and hyper-realism. When I read any of Wolfe's fiction I feel as though I know the characters better than people I know in my real day to day life. In addition to the depth of the characters is the broad diversity of the characters that Wolfe writes. How an old white guy can project with such utter authenticity the likes of Charlie Croker, Conrad Hensley, Roger "Too White" and Martha Croker as well as Serena Croker and every other character in between is difficult to understand and a pleasure to appreciate. That's the main thrust of my review for any Tom Wolfe book. The writing is always amazing. The characters are so good, and the writing so completely engrossing and real that the story itself is almost secondary.

That leads me to my primary criticism of this book. While the story is great, it does seem as though Wolfe lost his patience with the story or perhaps was told by his editor that he was not going to make his deadline, and so he decided to dash out the last sixth of the book. I'm looking at the narrow stack of pages that I have yet to read and I'm thinking to myself.. wait a minute.. there's.. not.. enough time! There's not enough time, not enough pages to resolve the myriad of plots and subplots that are still developing! The next 50 pages are either going to blow my mind or they are going to be thoroughly disappointing. While I can't really justify the adverb 'thoroughly', I can justify the adjective 'disappointing'. The epilogue almost reads like an apology to the reader. Wes Jordan and Roger Too White summarize what should have spanned an additional one to two hundred pages of the book. Disappointing indeed.

Above all, I liked it. It kept my attention, and was hilarious in places. Perhaps the best funny scene was the meeting at Coach McNutt's house, where the major protagonist, Charlie Croker, meets the All-American running back and his lawyer. Part of the amusement is the reaction to Mrs. McNutt, a sexy trophy wife, while she serves the powerful men. The story line meanders through various incidents-the workout meeting, where mighty but bankrupt Charlie is reduced to a sweating cripple by greedy bankers; the quail hunt, which shows the disdain of beautiful young women for powerful men; the meetings of the black Mayor and wannabe Roger Too White, who plan deft manipulations while striving to appear blacker than black to their "African American" constituents; the jail scene, where violence and hatred are uncovered, raw; and the equine climax in the breeding barn, which portrays sex at its lustiest. On and on through 700 pages these incidents are used to define the characters as stereotypical elements of the society that Wolfe disapproves. The characters, even Connie, the only good guy, remain stereotypes, but the skewering of ignorance, class-conscious ambition, and conspicuous consumption, which they depict is worthwhile and highly entertaining. Does Wolfe like anything? Well, he likes women as flesh, and he appreciates sensitive, sympathetic women, but he doesn't find many in Atlanta, nor in California. And he likes honesty, but doesn't find much of that either. The presentation of Stoicism as a rediscovered religion falls a little flat, as Wolfe himself recognizes. If Stoicism is to save the world, it will have to do so in individuals, as it did for Connie and for Charlie Croker. One can predict that feminists and gays will hate this book, and the less secure among American blacks and liberals will be insulted. Also bankers, lawyers, social climbers and other frivolous flotsam of modern society. But for my part, I appreciated a book that honors work and honesty while discarding material possessions and unfulfilling relationships.

As was the case with its similarly hefty predecessor The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe's latest is a big-canvas look at American culture - focusing again on the fragility of respectability in our materialist culture, and the ruthlessness of descent once that fragile net of respectability is broken. Wolfe's main fictional characters start out in trouble and fall from there, and don't seem to have any spiritual center to help ground them and protect them from the free-fall. This book is different from Bonfire, however. Although big-canvas, nobody could call Bonfire big-hearted. While A Man in Full again showcases Wolfe's amazing satirical and observational gifts, this book is much less mean-spirited, much more compassionate and empathetic than Bonfire. The characters are less cartoonish and two-dimensional, more believable. I found the non-Sherman McCoy chapters in Bonfire somewhat tedious while I thought all of the many parallel plot lines in this book were equally interesting. In Charlie Croker's ex-wife we even have a character who seems to be on the ascendant and growing!
One thing this book does share with Bonfire - it is very, very, funny. The set pieces involving the 60 year-old protagonist and his 28 year-old high-maintenance second wife are among the wittiest passages I've read.
The ambition of this book is staggering - to present in an entertaining comic novel four different class strata of late 20th century American society. Wolfe has really reached for the stars, and although the book is not perfect and sputters in places it works often enough to be called great. Even The Great Gatsby, a contrast to this book in its condensed wisdom and lyrical, poetic writing, has dead spots. Like Gatsby, this book captures a period of American life better than any other novel of the era, while providing insights to life which transcend that era. As was the case with Gatsby, it shows that wisdom and humor can co-exist in an ambitious novel, and that great literature can also be great fun to read.

I was prepared to dislike this book. After all, Tom Wolfe has long had a certain smarmy arrogance about him, what with his tailored white suits and superior attitude. He has always impressed me as a kind of literary publicist for the very power structure that he (sometimes) purports to skewer in his books. I had, in fact, come to think of him in terms of the label that Alexander Cockburn applied to him years ago, "A philistine masquerading as a social critic."
But I have to admit it: this book is nothing short of excellent. Wolfe has produced a highly crafted, gorgeously written page-turner, richly embossed with descriptive detail and enlivened with a plot filled with fascinating twists and turns.
Of course, Wolfe returns to one of his favorite themes here, the American macho entrepreneurial mover and shaker, and what makes him tick. Many of his best sections, in fact, involve confrontations between powerful men in which the testosterone veritably flies off the page. What's particularly fascinating is that it never becomes clear (to me, anyway), just whether Wolfe is trying to lampoon American Manhood or in his own droll way, celebrate it. Perhaps both.
Another aspect of the book that impressed me was the painstaking accuracy of Wolfe's usage of geographical and historical material. I can't speak for all of his Atlanta references, but in his discussions of various locations in the San Francisco Bay Area where I live, he was unerringly correct in terms of place names, how one places relates spatially to another, what the weather is like at this or that time or year, and an assortment of other details that many other writers annoyingly get wrong.
Some readers will dislike the book as a work of literature because it is a "best-seller," i.e., it is highly lucid and accessible, and hence does not lend itself to "deconstruction" or other avant-garde exercises in literary voyeurism. To that, I say, BRAVO!

The style of Tom Wolfe's earlier books, that is. This book attempts to reignite The Bonfire of the Vanities by changing the venue to Atlanta and the franchise to land development. But the same style of exaggerated, onomatopoetic, galloping prose no longer works well coming from this writer. It is the kind of prose better suited to an earlier, younger, more muscular and testosterone-engulfed Wolfe. He is no longer in firm command of this style, and, further, by its own very success it seems to have fallen into a parodistic swamp.
Respectfully, I believe it is time for Mr. Wolfe to consider a new approach to writing, one that would fit better with his current level of ability. Fewer words perhaps? More efficiently placed? I really can't say, but this book does not work as it might have twelve years ago. Think of Michelangelo's Pieta, done in youth, and Unbound Slaves, done in age. Both are great works. Michelangelo, working in stone, could no longer physically wring a David from Carrara marble. But he could make the suggestion of humans struggling to free themselves from the rock. For a writer, since the physical exertion is small, one may be encouraged to continue to write as one might have done years ago. But the effort, at least in this case, no longer brings forth the same result. Sometimes, eloquence begs silence.
I cannot recommend this book to anyone who loved Bonfire or The Right Stuff. It's long and tedious, and the ending is disappointing. This is not to say that the book doesn't have its moments. It's just that we expect a stream of such moments from Mr. Wolfe, and instead we find a few clear pools in a long, muddy road.

I read this book with eagerness, having been a big fan of The Right Stuff. I will admit to being pulled in for the first 100 pages. The research was excellent; the dual portrayal of life among the richest and poorest was clever, compelling, and well integrated for maximum effect. However, I found Wolfe's characterizations lacking in any sublety (Croker wrestles a huge rattlesnake and doesn't get bitten, despite a bum knee that soon afterward requires replacement? OK, I get it; he's the manliest of the manly. Puhleese!) The thing that angered me the most, however, was the copout ending, with Charlie's story being picked up where it left off by the most unlikely pair to discuss it (I won't give it away). Charlie turned into a completely different person, defying all his earlier characterizations. The Charlie of the first half never would have even spoken to or taken the advice of an underling such as his medical assistant (and with all his servants, why did he need Conrad, anyway?). Conrad comes to the realization that his whole ordeal, losing everything he cared about--happened so that he can come to the aid of this megamillionaire--and the very one whose callous act sparked his downward spiral? This, to me, is the height of snobbery. Was Conrad's life and growth as a person reduced to this, puffing up someone already so puffed up he could hardly fit in his clothes? What started out as a treatise for the common man, then, turns inexplicably into an obsequious tribute to male machismo and the affluent. In my opinion, Charley should have ended up serving Conrad, not the other way around. That would have really made him "A Man In Full."

What a strange mix of keen observation, sharp social polaroids and self-indulgent tripe! Although I read it avidly, I can't quite feel good about this book, about getting sucked into the narrative, about believing, at times, that his portrait of late 20th century America was starkly on-the money, because in the end, for all the "brutal truth" along the way, it goes nowhere.
Indeed it is mostly money, and what it buys, or fear of poverty, of sinking, that animates all the characters. And who among us can deny the terror of the abyss that most of us are only two or three paychecks away from? What other values does our culture offer? Here Mr. Wolfe is on-target. Considering how complex our world is, reducing most human motives to worries about what restaurants you can afford to dine in, and what car you drive, is not even astute.
This is like the popular literature that, to this day, 140 years after "The Origin of Species" and a century after Social Darwinism, still manages to make the "innovative discovery" that Man is "just" an animal. Mr. Wolfe, however, is a little more specialized, more tuned into tailored suits, the mystique of big money, and owning or not owning Rolexes and Mont Blanc pens. The photograph on the hard-back dust Jacket, with the author dressed in such dashing style, says it all. My donating $30 to feed Mr Wolfe's cultivated appetites was perhaps the thing I felt worst about.
Hey, more power to ya, Tom, when there is so much to be made in peddling little truths. But let's be honest here, this is the best-seller book business, and not literature.

Tom Wolfe's scanning, tunneling vision and rye humour has targeted the cultural landscape for four decades now. ' A Man in Full' cuts a broad swath through America of the 1990's. It uses the same template as his novel of a decade ago, 'Bonfire of the Vanities'. A rainbow of American success stories in progress converge into an irreconcilable destiny. Something must give and does. The motivating ideal of the protagonist here is a more primal force, however. The self made 'Southern Man', this 'noble' anachronism, as opposed to the insipid Wall Street Yuppie of Bonfire. The social forces on which the characters ride are more elemental, a clash of plate tectonics on a molten core of hubris. There's little subtlety in Wolfe's symbolisms or descriptions of the shallow pretensions in this cultural wasteland.
I am keenly aware when I read Wolfe that I am not reading literature. This is sheer indulgence! This is a soap opera. Finely and skillfully wrought, no doubt, but still a social circus of over bred egos and under bred moral sense. 'A Man in Full's' characters are brought to the material abyss through pride, lust, avarice and envy. These are surface dwellers, arrivistes without an appreciation of proportion and self restraint. They seek nothing deeper or more meaningful in their lives than an escalation up another rung on the social ladder. It's hard to like most of these people but dramatic personalities of this type are not made to be likable. It can still be a little overwrought at times. There is no stasis in Tom Wolfe's work, no get along and go along. All the protagonists are gladiators in the forum, everyone has an agenda, which leads to raucous, hilarious and even heroic results when put in the context of an elegant gallery benefit, a thoroughbred stud session, or a violent prison pod.
The sustaining philosophical undercurrent here is the Stoic creed of Epictetus. It is a philosophy of resolve and assertion of self dignity in the face of persecution, humiliation and defeat. It is the actualisation of this essential man which Wolfe uses as a contrast to the material and social accouterments by which Charles Croker and company have defined themselves. The episode of palpable terror and self affirmation in the prison pod is as powerful as anything written in contemporary fiction
If there is a problem with this book, it's that it's finely honed characters and situations and it's excellent writing are thread together by a somewhat tenuous and implausible story line. Sometimes it seems as though Wolfe threw it together as an afterthought to frame his comic, social and character essays, of which he is the modern master. I wrestled with giving it four stars on this basis, but the compensating strengths are too compelling.
I'm not sure quite what to make of the ending. As usual Wolfe ties up all the loose ends in an epilogue which can leave you wondering 'what's the point?'. To Wolfe's credit he does not provide happy endings or poetic justice. Charlie Croker and Sherman McCoy are joined at a point when their 'tragic flaws' and superficiality are becoming dimly evident even to themselves. We leave them in the detritus of their unraveled lives. The character's final dissolution is left unresolved. They seem to become aware of an inner self, though, brought to a point where they might even be developing some character. Something only they need understand. The rest of the world goes along merrily as if none of this had happened.
When I finish a book like this I feel like I've been to a feast where I've indulged myself a bit too much. In 100 years Tom Wolfe will be mainly of interest to social historians, as locked as his books are to this day and age. But on the off chance that they are studying Wolfe in lit classes, 'A Man in Full' should regarded as a masterpiece of journalistic fiction.

Too many words. And too many repeated. Like loins and megalomaniachal. That nobody sees Martha is either because she's a woman and her loins are too old, or she's not black. If she were black Wolff would have pointed her out for us, again and again. Wouldn't develop her but sure would point her out. Instead we read over and over about nobody seeing Martha. Charlie the blow-hard on the other hand can't get enough page time. Even though we understand him just by looking at the cover. He's a caricature out of central casting with an "I'M A SYMBOL LOOK AT ME" bad knee.
Don't bother reading past the earthquake. Conrad isn't the only one to lose his book in a fault. What a cowardly way to avoid a true test of Conrad's mettle. What fate awaited him in the pod that Wolff was spared having to write? Earthquakes occur when you're losing at Monopoly and you're ten years old. Is that the only reason Conrad and Croker Foods was in California? Why not coastal Georgia and have a hurricane? Oh yeah, that Hiasson thing, wouldn't want to be plagarizing. Though it would have been funnier throughout.
Something about the critics applauding the "sprawling social commentary" bugged me. Peepgas owned a Hyundai. Conrad had a Honda Excel. How did that mistake get past the publisher, was that Wolff's poor understanding of cheap cars, or the editor's? In other words if Wolff got that wrong what else is wrong that I can't verify. Like those lingo's he seemed so proud to be a master of.

Charlie Croker is one pig-headed cracker from the old-South. Charlie raises horses, fearlessly handles snakes, shoots quail, runs his own fleet of jets, is married to a younger, beautiful women, and is in general a good ole boy -- even owns an honest ta gawd plantation where all the helpin' folk are black.
Charlie is also a man in prime need of a humbling experience. Charlie is a real estate developer and his most serious problems develop as a result of a wide-body ego coupled with backward planning -- desire it, act on it, followed by, plan for it, pay for it. Croker becomes overextended on a real estate deal for a development that is largely a monument to himself, even named it The Croker Concourse. This leads to a "workout session" at Planners Bank, where Charlie is given a most unpleasant reception. Wolfe describes the scene in vintage style, casting a rheumy eye on corporate America and its ugly military efficiency and total bottom line orientation. It is at this point where you will realize that you have come to like Charlie Croker, that you are pulling for this humus head from south of the gnat line, that Croker, raw and crude as he is, contains a genuine spirit and optimism that has been bleached out of the rest of us.
Politics and money drive the entire story. Wolfe shows how saturated Americans are with these two Noble Truths. (Even Conrad-the-stoic's actions, the spiritual soul of this 787 page journey, were brought about by the frustrations of not being an economically viable member of society.) A Man in Full is a snort fest, (I read this while bus commuting and couldn't contain my laughter, despite the worried stares) Wolfe's satire is as biting as a side ache, unfortunately, the truth running beneath the humor is a sobering one. This is the kind of book our grand kids will read and when they finish it, they will close the book and exclaim, "My god, were you people ever messed up!"
I especially liked the chapters dealing with Atlanta's black mayor. He is like an inverted Oreo, posing publicly as white for the "money" constituents from the wealthy white neighborhoods, and posing privately as black for the less economically powerful, but more numerous black voters. The tribal art collection ebbs and flows through his office in accordance with the political tide!
Wolfe brings the mayor, Croker and Planners Bank together on an issue that threatens to explode the entire city in racial tension. Fareek Fanon, a black football star is accused of raping a white woman from one of Atlanta's most influential families. If Croker, (a former football great) speaks out on Fareek's behalf, maybe the mayor can help him with all his debts to Planners Bank? And maybe someone high up in Planners Bank will be owed a valuable gift in return for forgiving Crokers debt? And if the mayor quells the coming riots, maybe he will reclaim the straying voters needed for his reelection? Everyone is itching and planning for the scratch. A simple premise, but greed and political chess playing enter the equation, creating a centrifugal force that sucks some characters into the melee and spins others off into ruin.
Ruthless and wicked writing from a man who portrays American society with a magnifying glass held over the warts and moles.

This book--which is really about manhood--is a relief from the domestic fiction that I seem to have been lured into recently by Oprah-hype and best-sellers that focus on women's quests for fulfillment within the confines of their limited worlds. Their absorption within themselves becomes boring after a steady diet of this kind of work. So the world of wheeling and dealing, betrayal, racial politics, and even prison life and the large canvas of modern-day times played out against the question of what it means to be a man in today's society seemed interesting by comparison. Of course 742 pages of modern canvas is a bit much, no matter the entertainment value of the numerous set pieces described by other reviewers. When writers become this famous it's hard for editors to cut anything, but this book would have benefited by being 200 pages shorter.
I think a problem with the novel is the structure: too many characters and an alternating focus on the characters that interrupts the momentum. The first half of the novel lacks impetus to move it forward; readers need lots of patience to keep interested. However, when the book reaches the prison break, the conflict has intensified enough to move the reader along.
Yes, the ending may not be ideal. In this culture we are suspicious of any "answers" so the embracing of Stoicism may seem too pat, too 19th Century. Also, the author seems to be take Stoicism seriously one moment and then to ridicule it the next. The epilogue, however, made me chuckle as I thought, "Here we go again. Only the race has changed."
The novel, while less outrageous and hilarious than Bonfire of the Vanities, is worth reading but does require perseverance. The characterizations are better than in Bonfire:Wolfe begins with types but he ends with fully rounded individuals in the case of Croker and Hensley, both of whom I care genuinely care about by the end of the book.
For a really thoughtful assessment of this book see Michael Lewis's review in the New York Times.

Wolfe is best known as the leading American chronicler of each the last three decades, but in this novel he moves deeper into the more timeless terrain of human nature. His famous 1996 Forbes ASAP essay on Edward O. Wilson demonstrated that he has been grounding himself in the latest Neo-Darwinian thinking about how differences in sex, race, and sexual orientation impact society. Like the evolutionary psychologists (e.g., Steve Pinker), he's obsessed with how reproduction leads to the sex differences that make up the bedrock of human nature. Like the students of human biodiversity (e.g., me), Wolfe's fascinated by how race differences resemble faint sex differences: for example, few serious novels have been more concerned with its characters muscle to fat ratios. This may seem superficial but it's not, since muscle and fat percentages correlate with male and female hormones, which in turn correlate with personality and behavior (e.g., aggressiveness).
Wolfe has been noticing racial differences in muscularity at least since Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers almost 30 years ago (recall Wolfe's description of how white bureaucrats fear hard-muscled black protestors, are less afraid of Mexicans, are not afraid of Chinese, and are dumb-founded by the massive Samoans), so it's not as if his recent readings in neo-Darwinism have radically altered his world-view -- instead they've merely brought organizing principles to his decades of obversations of humanity.

Like Tom Clancy, Tom Wolfe writes very detailed and descriptive prose. I have rarely had a problem with that sort of writing with Clancy and some of Wolfe's previous books. More often than not, that descriptiveness is considered a hindrance or an asset, depending on the plot. The critics have always knocked Clancy for his detail, but that same criticism was not leveled at this book by the same reviewers. Sad, because it should have been. Here, Wolfe writes some beautiful passages. Other times, and probably more often than not, his penchant for expansive detail bogs down the plot. Unfortunately, that takes away from what should have been an excellent story on the present state of society in the U.S. South. It read very fast at the outset, but by the middle of the book, I found it awfully slow-going, making reading seem more of a chore than the usual pleasure it is. I was also disappointed in the conclusion. After lavishing us with expansive detail through the first 700+ pages, Mr. Wolfe wrapped up all the "loose ends" of the plot in the space of five or six pages. After slogging through the book, that sort of conclusion seemed dramatically out-of-kilter from the rest of the story. It was almost as if Mr. Wolfe had been imposed a page "cap" of some sort, and he was scrambling to conclude the story so as not to exceed that limit. To sum up, though, I certainly would have expected more from this novel, considering Mr. Wolfe's excellent work to this point and the critical acclaim this book got when it was in hardcover form. However, it is very slow going, a bit "ragged" in parts, and sort of a disappointing effort. It seems that he could have told this story in about 200 fewer pages, and left more room to conclude the story properly. Be forewarned...do not be taken in by the critical hype. It is one of Mr. Wolfe's weaker efforts; if you've never read him before, read "The Right Stuff" or "The Bonfire Of The Vanities". Those are more enjoyable to read, and a better example of Mr. Wolfe's talents.

I loved reading many of the other reviews for this book. There is such a great variety of strong feeling that I can only hope it was what Wolfe was after. He certainly got under a lot of people's skin. The principle objections to this book, that the ending is weak and the story is too long and meandering, while both being true, don't really undermine its great strengths - wonderful writing, larger than life (though 'real') characters and a plot that not only highlights numerous real social issues but shows how they tend to rub up against one another in unexpected ways. In other words, there is a messiness to even the thematic aspects of the book that seems to be intentional and true to life.
Wolfe can't help but exaggerate. That is what satirists do. Yet those who complain that the characters aren't real or are stereotypes seem to really mean that they don't like these people; 'real' people would be, I guess, someone they could identify with. Yet, if Wolfe had chosen Donald Trump or Ross Perot as his hero, could his description be any more 'believeable' or less stereotypic than his portrayal of Charlie Croker? Seems to me that the rich complexity of ego, selfishness and lack of self awareness that come to the fore in his characters (including those in Bonfire) is a very human, very common and very real thing. We are all unbelieveable stereotypes to some, but that doesn't make us less real.
And I especially liked the reviewer who starts his review by saying 'Too many words.' This is so like the scene in 'Amadeus' when the King says to Mozart that his compositions have 'too many notes.' For those of us who love the bite and flash of Wolfe's writing, there can never be too many words, even when they don't add up to the full measure that Wolfe is striving for.

I'm surprised at several of the the store reviews that seem to have taken reading this book as if it were a chore. Yes, it's long, but I, for one, found it strangely absorbing.
Do not be afraid of long books. Wolfe engages in an impressive cast of characters and takes time to develop many of them. His narrative flow is superb. I enjoyed not only the plot and the characters, but the writing style as well. The author has a certain way with the English language that is captivating, and concepts like "boys with breasts" (aka today's skin-n-bones models), "saddlebags" and "hubba ho" can be both though-provoking and laugh-out-loud funny. Wolfe has a unique sense of humor, considering he routinely does things off-beat like naming a black maid "Auntie Bella" (antebellum?).
Wolfe seems to love his characters (even the unsympathetic ones) and takes readers along for a wild ride with characters like Roger Too White (a "beige brother" lawyer and Morehouse grad), Serena Crocker (a money-chasing second wife), Martha Crocker (a bitter first wife), Raymond Peepgrass (a money-chasing bank geek after the first wife), and Conrad Hensley (a bitter blue-collar worker reborn in prison). The antihero main character, however, will blow you away. Charlie Crocker is as much tall tale as real man. A real-estate giant in Atlanta, as well as an ex-football great, Charlie teeters on the brink of bankruptcy and personal ruin. At times like watching a train wreck, one never knows exactly what to think of Charlie -- he can be both sympathetic and unsympathetic to the extreme.
Wolfe seems to have a "take it or leave it" quirkiness that will engage some readers to the fullest and turn off others completely. Yes, you might have to sift through some of the author's annoying habits, like describing IN GREAT DETAIL every item of clothing every character is wearing at any given moment, but the experience of reading this book on the whole was very satisfying. I was left frustrated at the end, in fact, because I had no one to discuss the book with afterward. It really leaves a residue on the reader and begs to be thought of long after the last page has been turned.

Wolfe changes the scenery from New York to Atlanta, and the rich "masters of the universe" become the super-rich Southern plantation owners (anybody who is anybody has their own Leer Jet), but many of the elements of this sprawling novel will be familiar to fans of "Bonfire of the Vanities".
A Man in Full is a fun novel - ambitious, sometimes silly, always audacious. Did I mention that it was a fun novel to read? It easily kept my attention through its 700+ pages.
The conclusion is just somewhat far fetched as Wolfe struggles to bring this wild ride to a close. The mix of philosophical musing (thinly spread) and anti-greed in the conclusion is a bit hard to swallow; the reader finds himself saying "wait just a minute, who is this rich white-suited haberdasher Tom Wolfe to be lecturing *me* on the vice of greed?"
But these comments notwithstanding A Man In Full was a novel that I enjoyed. This is storytelling at it's best, sprinkled with social commentary with which the reader is free to agree or disagree. Looking for spiritually whole characters to give you some wise insight on how to live your life? Then you should probably look elsewhere, you won't find role models here. My favorite character is Raymond Peepgas, a Harvard MBA stuck in middle management who can't quite manage to make ends meet on his six figure salary.
Wolfe impresses as a courageous writer who isn't bashful about sticking his neck out; the breadth of characters and scenery is almost ridiculous. We're taken from a frozen foods warehouse to a prison to grand plantations of the Old South to Atlanta's freaknick of the New South. This novel has its detractors (who have made some valid points) but at the end of the day this novel entertains. And according to Wolfe's philosophy on novels, that's what it's all about, isn't it?

This was a fine book, but unfortunately I couldn't read it straight through, I had to put it down for a month, I guess I just don't have the endurance for a 700+ page book, I put them all down after 400 pages and take a break. This was a look at the world of Atlanta, Socialites and business is a town that (apparently) is not that far from the sticks. Since I have never been to Atlanta, or anywhere down south, I do not know if this rings true to socialite, elitist Atlanta. It is a good weaving of 3 tales, A successful Atlanta business man who has made some bad decisions lately and is about to lose it all, the mayor of Atlanta and an old friend teeming up to prevent a social tragedy involving a heinous deed perpetrated by a despicable man, who just happens to have the right social standing, and a laborer who is sent to prison after the worst string of bad luck I have ever seen and finds salvation in the words of Epictetus and Zeus. I found the book engrossing at times and long winded at others. If there had been about 200 fewer pages I would have rated this book a 4 or a 5, but it just seemed to drag a little. If long novels don't bother you then I strongly suggest this one. If you are more a fan of the quick, short book, don't bother. Thanx for your time, T

This is the literary equivalent of the that other over-hyped bomb of 1998; Godzilla. Another example of a PR machine runamuck: the Time magazine cover, the 60 Minutes interview, etc etc. What got lost in it all was that the book just isn't very good. Had any fledgling author submitted this sprawling ill-concieved monstrosity, they would have received a letter from the publisher advising them to keep their day job. Writing a sloppy social commentary containing a multitude of semi-witty character names (all of the law firms have names that sound like those old "fake" books written by I Seymour Butts...hardee-har har) does not make one a "modern day Dickens". As a fan of Wolfe's earlier works I was appalled at how poorly crafted the story was, the feeble attempts at dialect that swung in and out of the story, and a grasp of African American culture that was laughable at best. While not the worst book of the year (that can never happen to anyone else as long as Tom Clancy continues to put pen to paper) this book is a terrible let down and, to borrow someone else's analogy, like watching a former Hall of Fame pitcher having to roll one to the plate. Tom Wolfe should have taken a cue from Thomas Heggin and stopped at one great novel.

Tom Wolfe has done something that rarely happens, writing a moralistic tale from looking at the lives of some of the most undesirable people you hope you will never meet. Yet he makes you think that these people can be redeemed, so the message is an uplifting one. My main quibble with the book is that the morality could use a little more spiritual uplift, and less of an existentialist one. Tom Wolfe is masterful at descriptions of his main character, Charles Croker, through extensive development -- something that rarely happens in today's action and romance dominated fiction. Although many will dislike the story, the plot, and the characters, think of how the Russians probably viewed Dostoyevsky (The Idiot, The Possessed, etc.) or the French viewed Les Miserables. Yet we come to see the universal in these from the distance of time and space. I think the universal is deeply present in A Man in Full, and this book will be an important measure of the 1990s in the United States. I also think that those who are overly concerned about their material comforts, strivings, and balance sheets can learn a lot from thinking about themselves as they read this book. If you don't find a little of yourself here, you may not be looking hard enough.

Four stars instead of five because I believe the book can be edited more stringently. Sustainable satire is difficult to write and in this age, I believe, it is even harder to understand. We live in an "ironic" age where irony and satire are misunderstood or misued, and every serious expression is placed in quotes. That said, Mr. Wolfe has given us a satirical view of America as it exists vis a vis race and sexual relations. It's not just a Saturday Night Live skit. Race is the most serious issue blocking our path to undertaking the class issue that is literally killing us all. Sex has become politicized to the point of absurdity. Amused as we might be by many of the characters antics, childishness and boorishness, to name only a few, Wolfe's book presents serious issues to contemplate. As far as character: Mr. Wolfe's Charlie Croker was well drawn, believable and consistent. For satire this I believe is quite an achievement. To Mr. Wolfe I would say continue on this path and let no one, not even yourself off the hook. I do think the last chapter fizzled. Rework it if there's another edition, please. One last comment: the religion of Zeus fits in with the pronouncement that DeToqueville made about Americans and religion. Right on to that.

Alanta, Georgia stars in Tom Wolfe's latest novel, A Man in Full. This book, already nominated for a National Book Award, follows Mr. Wolfe's other blockbuster novels Bonfire of the Vanities and The Right Stuff.
The main character in Tom Wolfe's novel is Charlie Croker, a 250 pound former Georgia Tech football player turned real estate developer. Charlie is a provincial Donald Trump. At Georgia Tech, Charlie was called the 60 Minute Man because he played both offense and defense for the full 60 minute game.
Atlanta is like no other city in the South since it lacks much historical lore. It is not old and decorated with stately 200-yeard old mansions like Charleston, Savannah, or Richmond. Anything antique in Atlanta was long ago razed to make way for a myriad of gleaming glass office towers.
While the harmony between white businessmen and black citizens is good, in Atlanta blacks and whites live apart like they do in most American cities. But unlike most cities, in Atlanta blacks thoroughly control local politics, because 75% of the voting population is black. They proudly refer to their home as the Chocolate Mecca. Consequently all the political power is vested squarely in their hands.
At the pinnacle of black society are the Spellman and Morehouse college elite such as the attorney Roger White, another major character in the novel. At school, Roger White earned the nickname "Roger Too White" from his college classmates. This refers to his flawless dress, interest in classical music, and impeccable English free of black colloquialisms.
Through Roger Too White, we learn several heretofore well-kept secrets of black society. Roger White is also a member of another privileged circle. These are black people who can pass the so-called "paper bag test". These are black people whose skin color is no darker than a brown paper bag.
The main character Charlie Croker is a down-home country fellow who has made a pile of money in the real estate business. He spends it lavishly on toys like a Gulfstream V jet and a 28,000 acre quail-hunting plantation. The stewardess of his jet is a shapely honey named Peaches. Only in Georgia-the self-proclaimed Peach State--would you find a mouth-watering bimbo sporting that name.
Charlie Croker dumped his wife of many years to marry a 20-something trophy wife. Together they live in the most fashionable of Atlanta neighborhoods: Buckhead. In Buckhead the grass is greener and the air is cooler than in the southern and eastern sections of the town where the blacks live. As a matter of fact, it is cooler and greener than Chamblee-now called "Chambodia" because of all the Asians-and the lilly white suburbs that surround the city too.
In describing Turmptime, Charlie's quail hunting preserve, Wolfe is accurate in his description of a Southern plantation. The Southern Plantation culture still thrives albeit as a recluse for the wealthy sportsman. But Tom Wolfe picked the wrong sport in my opinion. It is true that some hunters prefer quail. But the truly rich folk buy southern plantations so that they can hunt ducks.
Each of the recent Tom Wolfe novels have added new phrases to the English language. The title to The Right Stuff has come to mean someone who has the wherewithal to conquer the toughest of assignments such as space flight. The major character in Bonfire of the Vanities is a "Master of the Universe". This is someone, like the protagonist millionaire bond trader, who is an absolute master of his own destiny and holds the world at bay. No such phrase jumps out at you when you read A Man in Full unless you consider the phrase "commuterburbs". These are the suburbs that ring all major American cities-Wolfe singles out Snellville, Georgia. These are featureless towns where the bourgeois classes live and make the daily, grueling commute to the big city to work.
The other major character in A Man in Full is Fareek Fannon, Georgia Tech's star running back. He comes from the the squalor of a ghetto in southern Atlanta. Fareek faces a predicament that lets Wolfe further explore the delicate subject of race relations in Atlanta. Fareek is accused by a Georgia Tech coed of rape during the annual week of partying by black college students known as Freaknik.
Freaknik is a week-long party in Atlanta where black college students from across the country gather to engage in the same sort of debauchery that white colleges students pursue in Fort Lauderdale during Spring Break. But while the occasions are similar, Wolfe points out that the in-your-face attitude of the black students makes the white Atlantans quite uncomfortable.
Some white business leaders have sought to rein in the Freaknik festvitity. Of course, the blacks have said such crowd control strategies are rooted in racism. Wolfe illustrates this point perfectly when he describes a bare-midriffed black beauty wildly gyrated her body atop a car in stopped-dead traffic on Peachtree street. Her dance takes place in front of the staid all-white, Old South Piedmont Driving Club. The black woman dances while the rap lyrics "Ram-Yo-Booty" blare from the car's speaker. Regardless of how open-minded and liberal you purport to be, the pleasure gained from the lyrics "Ram-Yo-Booty" is not understood by anyone in the white community. Quite the contrary, this music suggests a militancy that threatens the same people.
The novel's plot unwinds as that attorney Roger Too White and the Atlanta Mayor, Wesley Jordan, conspire with Charlie Croker to create a deal that will save Fareek Fanon, the football start, from the rape accusation and save the city from a resultant race riot. The black civic leaders and the white business interests want to keep race relations in Atlanta humming along in The Atlanta Way.

In this wonderfully complex, funny, and often harrowing novel, Tom Wolfe explores peoples' obsessions with status, making money, and achieving success. While we often admire the builders and the athletes of the world, we often forget that they, too, are human beings, with many of the shortcomings we all have. Wolfe also shows the flip side of this admiration: how we love to read newspaper stories about celebrities, but often are secretly titillated when their foibles and failures are revealed. We rationalize, "maybe we are better off than them, afterall?"
Charlie Croker, former college football player and master real estate developer, has it all. He is incredibly wealthy, owns an enormous plantation ("Turpmtine") in Atlanta, Georgia with all the trappings: servants, horses, airplanes, and a young and beautiful, sexy, and smart second wife. Charlie is also 60 years old, impotent, ailing with an old knee injury, and on the verge of bankruptcy. He is haunted by his creditors from PlannersBank, and is in danger of losing it all.
Fareek "the Cannon" Farron is a young, African-American, college football star, who is admired, not only for his strength and great athletic ability, but also for his rare achievement of rising above the poverty and criminality of the South Atlanta neighborhood of his childhood. Rumors of Fannon's alleged rape of the daughter of a prominent, white businessman threaten to ruin his reputation and possibly to disrupt race relations in Atlanta.
Conrad is a poor white, 23 year old warehouse worker in one of Charlie Croker's California frozen food outlets. Conrad is an honest, hard working, and exceedingly principled young man who does not have much in the way of money or possessions. He also has a nagging mother-in-law who believes he is a failure as well. Through a series of horrible mishaps and misunderstandings, Conrad is jailed and could very well lose his wife and children. Through his reading of a book of dialogues of the ancient Greco-Roman Stoics that his wife mistakenly sends to him while he is in jail, Conrad learns a new philosophy of life. This philosophy, which Conrad later imparts to Charlie Croker, changes both of their lives forever. They come to realize that there are far more important things than the lure of "success" and material goods. It is no tragedy if one loses all of these things. What is more important is what is left: the inner self, the dignity, "the spirit" that all human being have. That is what sustains life when all else is gone.

Atlanta. It's about the new Atlanta and a pompous white/cracker plantation owner and land developer, Charlie Croker. His trophy 28-year-old wife and his hired "negroes" complete his picture of successful businessman. But, something has happened to Charlie along the way to success - he's gone broke and the bankers are dogging him demanding payment on his loans.

It's also about the new black Atlanta with its African themed Mayor's office, its light-skinned lawyer who dresses like a British Diplomat and its exercise centers which try to mold all Southern women into "boys with breasts."

Adversely affected by Charlie's extravagance is Conrad who works in one of his freezer units in Oakland, California. He's lost his job and is now in prison where the "bloods", the Nordic Bund and the Latinos eye each other in the prison "pod."

Only Tom Wolfe could tell this story and his satire is pitch-perfect as is his descriptions of dialogue, clothing, motivation and characters in this funny, sad, poignant and entertaining story of modern Atlanta, Georgia "above the gnat line" in Charlie Croker's terminology.

Bonfire of the Vanities worked so well because it had a narrative drive that compelled you to read on. A great story and as a bonus, Wolfe's trenchant, satirical observations and descriptions. A Man In Full has the descriptions and observations but a compelling plot is completely missing. Are we actually supposed to care about Charlie Croker, a man who finds nothing quite as amusing as an AIDS joke? Are we supposed to believe that an intelligent, skilled, highly motivated man cannot find any work in the Bay Area during a boom economy? This is a book that asks us to believe that one learns to worship Zeus in prison and that Croker himself would end up becoming a Zeus evangelist. And how embarassing that Wolfe uses the gay community as some kind of metaphor for moral decay. What next? Demon Rum? I could only cringe as I read Wolfe's rap lyrics. Where was the editor when he turned those pages in? The ending felt like after writing 730 pages, Wolfe realized the book was only supposed to be 742 pages, so quick, time to wrap things up. What little plot that exists is ended with a two person chit chat recounting where everyone ended up, much like the closing credits of American Graffiti. Nobody writes descriptions better than Tom Wolfe, and for that it is worth reading. But skill in descriptive writing doesn't matter if we don't care about what is being described. A major disappointment.

Tom Wolfe has made his fictional preferences loud and clear. For New Journalism's poster boy, minimalism is a wash, not to mention a failure of nerve. The real mission of the American writer is to produce fat novels of social observation--the sort of thing Balzac would be dishing up if he had made it into the Viagra era. Wolfe's manifesto would have had a hubristic ring if he hadn't actually delivered the goods in 1987 with The Bonfire of the Vanities. Now, more than a decade later, he's back with a second novel. Has the Man in White lived up to his own mission? On many counts, the answer would have to be yes. Like its predecessor, A Man in Full is a big-canvas work, in which a multitude of characters seems to be ascending or (rapidly) descending the greasy pole of social life: "In an era like this one," a character reminds us, "the twentieth century's fin de siècle, position was everything, and it was the hardest thing to get." Wolfe has changed terrain on us, to be sure. Instead of New York, the focus here is Atlanta, Georgia, where the struggle for turf and power is at least slightly patinated with Deep South gentility. The plot revolves around Charlie Croker, an egomaniacal good ol' boy with a crumbling real-estate empire on his hands. But Wolfe is no less attentive to a pair of supporting players: a downwardly mobile family man, Conrad Hensley, and Roger White II, an African American attorney at a white-shoe firm. What ultimately causes these subplots to converge--and threatens to ignite a racial firestorm in Atlanta--is the alleged rape of a society deb by Georgia Tech football star Fareek "The Cannon" Fanon.

Wolfe is a natural born writer.. When I'm reading one of his books, I always wonder how he could have survived had he been born into a society without literature. I suppose he would have become a great (oral) story teller. (I found it interesting that he sort of addresses this possibility when Conrad meets the elderly professor.)

The words, the images, just pour from Wolfe's pen (computer, nowadays). The absurdity of Charlie riding his horse at his plantation with all of the superfluous people and accouterments, what an amazing vision Wolfe creates. Nothing seems overly processed or contrived and the product is brilliant. Indeed as another reviewer stated, Epictetus can change your life. I can't (and won't) stop thinking about some of the ideas that Conrad relates.

What an accomplishment! To write a story that ties together: Charles Croker, a 60 y.o. Atlanta real estate broker who is in danger of losing his billion dollar fortune; Conrad Hensley, an idealistic, laid-off follower of the Stoic, Epicetus; Fareek Fanon, an Afro-American college football star alleged to have raped the daughter of Iman Armholster, a leader of the white community; and Roger Too White an Afro-American lawyer on the rise. Throw in a variety of other uniquely described stereotypical characters and you have the ingedients for a masterpiece. Read with enthusiasm and slow enough to savor the descriptions of people, places, things and situations, this book ranks right up there with the best. The teachings of Epicetus and the feelings of Charlie, who at 60 questions the meaning of his life were particularly relevant and powerful. I will often refer back to this story and read a page or two just to get a chuckle and see the beauty of the English language in the hands of a brilliant wordsmith. Postscript: If you have the opportunity to listen to the audio tape you won't be disappointed. Ralph Ogden Stiers does a brilliant job of capturing the essence of each character.

Tom Wolfe dishes out another American novel on a grand scale, providing just the sort of social commentary one expects. Unfortunately, Wolfe sets up his readers to be disappointed with this work. Wolfe paints a detailed picture of his subject, Atlanta real estate developer Charlie Croker, and of those whose paths will cross Charlie's as he struggles to salvage his financial empire and his soul. The level of detail is almost oppresive for the first 300 pages of the book, as the reader searches in vain for plot development. Finally, the plot begins to move and the characters come to life, but the enjoyment is short-lived as the end of the book approaches. After having engaged the reader in the lives of his characters, Wolfe produces a brief and tidy ending that leaves the reader wondering why Wolfe bothered to tell us so much about them. Perhaps if the publishing industry were willing to actually edit the works of its star authors, Wolfe would have been told to put a bit more follow-through on his literary swing.

Thank God for Benjamin Franklin and a curse on Tom "the copywriter for the rich" Wolfe! If I had to buy this book I would use it as an anchor for my cabin cruiser! Does anybody realize that he is nothing more than a jerk-off artist for ersatz prose? Who is buying this book? Good Lord....it was nothing but a tome about rich people...who apparently have some kind of weird allure for this foppish "writer"! After diligently trying to read this potboiler for 100 pages, I realized I could get through two pages by just reading one line of lame dialogue. Give it up, Tom. You have nothing to say except "I have to meet my deadline and suck in the public to support my increasingly diminished reputation. When you think of it.....you never had anything to say in the first place! As one good writer remarked: " if someone buys my book, its the highest compliment I could receive". Well, Tommy-Boy, I went to the library and saved myself a ton of money! Zeus is on the loose, indeed!

Tom Wolfe is full of great ideas and observances about the absurd society we live in, however, his prose tend to go into long tedious descriptions that just become rhetorical, and not necessary to the core of the story. I almost shucked this book several times while plowing through, and skimming a lot of the first 400 pages, but I'm glad I pursued. After the first half it is smooth sailing, and truly entertaining, if not shocking.
This is a story of Charlie Crocker, a 60-year-old self-made Southern real estate tycoon, who, with all his disgusting faults and habits, is still somewhat of a sympathetic character. He entertains society's upper crust in Atlanta, Georgia, and at his multi-million dollar farm. He prides himself for his open mind and the way he treats his hired help, while he unconsciously projects racial slurs, alienating potential investors and colleagues. He has a new very young trophy wife, Sabrina, and a baby daughter. His first wife, Martha, tries hard to fit back into high-society without the support of her husband (even though she's the one who comes from old money), which lends a sub-story to this novel. His big venture, Crocker Concourse, a huge office complex on the outskirts of Atlanta, is going broke, and sinking poor Charlie deeper into debt. Unbeknownst to his beautiful young wife, the poor sucker is going broke. But he's not going to go down without a fight.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the continent outside of Oakland, California, in one of Crocker's Frozen Foods storage plants, a young man and victim of circumstance, Conrad Hensley, is getting himself into one mess after another. Much of Conrad's troubles come when he is laid off from his job due to Crocker following his lawyer's advice to downsize some of his assets. Through frustration and humiliation, Conrad reacts to his situation until he ends up in a California prison. How do Conrad and Crocker meet up and become co-dependent? How does Conrad provide an escape for Crocker's financial woes? Wolfe has created a clever solution to Charlie Crocker's problems that depicts the Southern character at its worse. There are several stories within the main story, which make this book rich and entertaining as well as a social statement about human nature, the inflated male ego, sexism, racism, and corruption on a government and corporate level... There is a very descriptive section about the mating of a prize stallion on Crocker's farm, that reflects Charlie's machismo nature at the highest level, which is utterly shocking to the reader, but very affective! Aside from Wolfe's tendency to over describe, this is a great book!

This book oozes testosterone from between its pages, as thick and pungent as frat house Jagermeister. From "Cap'm" Croker, who survives on his obstinate bull-headedness, to Conrad Hensley, whose work-hardened hands have grown so thick he cannot type and thus cannot support his family in the new economy, to Roger Too White, who spends the entire book trying to prove his manliness by being 'black enough,' all of the characters are both defined and destroyed by their maleness. I say all of the characters because the few women are mere props--probably more real than the men, who are caricatures--but peripheral figures nonetheless. This book is such an indictment of the archetypal male, one might almost expect it to have come from one of the more celebrated feminist writers, except that the characters are so completely male they could only have come from Wolfe, the archetypal male writer (behind perhaps Louis L'Amour, Ernest Hemingway, and Mark Twain, whose white suits he tries so undeservedly to imitate).
If some said that Bonfire of the Vanities perfectly captured the zeitgeist of the booming late-Reagan era, A Man in Full attempts to do the same for the late nineties, but misses the mark and instead portrays something that is only vaguely post-eighties. Even so, I give Wolfe a lot of credit for this ambitious, abstract exercise, this catalog of male failings, for although not exactly enjoyable, it is certainly compelling and I admit I could not put it down.

It took Tom Wolfe more than decade to finally publish his second novel. Using the same journalistic skills which made him famous, A MAN IN FULL sees Wolfe turning his keen eye and withering criticism south, to Atlanta, where we first meet Charlie Croker. One time college football star, now a middle aged businessman whose spectacular success has just hit the brick wall real, real hard. Too much to lose, he finds himself with few options to get himself out of the hole he has dug.

One option, though, takes the form of Fareek `the Cannon' Fanon. Born of the city's ghetto, now a star football player at Georgia Tech, he displays all the arrogance, ignorance, and dysfunction that years in the slum followed by athletic success is able to produce. Accused of raping the daughter of a prominent white family, he needs Croker's help to get past this block to his career and, perhaps more importantly, the endorsements that come with it.

Wolfe is especially strong in his portrayal of Fanon. As he is innocent, a lesser writer would have made Fanon the object of pure, unadulterated sympathy. It is a testament to Wolfe's strength that he is, instead, thoroughly unlikeable. The inevitable meeting between Croker and Fanon is among the most wince-inducingly hilarious scenes ever drawn on the fictitious written page.

And can Wolfe paint a picture. A MAN IN FULL is filled with numerous scenes that truly make one wonder how Wolfe really does it. Another major character, Conrad Hensley, finds himself sinking deeper and deeper into the abyss of the American legal system after an incident so well described that Hensley's fate seems almost inevitable in retrospect.

Tossed in for good measure are a medley of politicians, race hustlers, and innocent bystanders, all of which help bring things together. Tom Wolfe's novels may not be the happiest books out there. But they are among the most entertaining and, true to form, among the most realistic. A MAN IN FULL is, in my opinion, Wolfe's best and, even a number of years after its publishing, easily withstands the test of time.

Don't be frightened by the book's length, because once you pick it up, you'll end up hooked right till the last pages. But hooked in a good sense, because this is a pageturner that provides wide social commentary on many issues such as race, the insides of corporations, social class, sex, etc. The characters are wonderfully defined and each of them is interesting in their own terms, although the most fascinating is Charlie Croker. The book has everything: frantic action and suspense (in the Conrad sections), humor, a great insight into the characters' thoughts (most notably in Martha and Ray's date) and even some philosophy thrown in. The title is appropiate as the book deals with what defines manhood in modern society. Is it wealth, social prominence, or integrity? I also enjoyed the setting; Atlanta was a city I knew nothing about and I feel the book captured its spirit.

Some minor quibbles: there were too many descriptions about what each character was wearing, and about such person's garden, driveway, mansion, etc. I felt they didn't add much to the story. As for the ending, it seemed a bit rushed and contrived, but it worked for me.

I guess the best compliment I can make about this book is I never wanted it to end!

As an Atlantan, I must say this book describes the elitist attitudes of much of this city so accurately! Not only that, Wolfe has made an extraordinary effort to accurately and historically portray the city and its figureheads.
An earlier reviewer thought this book was disparaging to African Americans. I completely disagree; I felt that it showed the cynicism and hypocricies of the upper-class white "good 'ol boys" in a viciously clever, cutting way.
The scenes of life in prison were astonishing; although one tends to sometimes get mired down in Wolfe's descriptions of things and his occasional wordiness, such an accurate portrayal of the sordidness of incarceration (or as I imagine it!) was painted.
Overall, I highly recommend this book. I read it while in college, and believe me, it is a page-turner. It is, however, extremely difficult to hide during boring classes because of its sheer size (plus, I had the hardcover edition). If you want a cynical portrayal of "how things really are" in Atlanta, then you can take this book for the gospel truth.
The ending, however, leaves much to be desired and seems a little overboard.

As a sixth-generation Atlanta native I couldn't wait to read Tom Wolfe's take on my city. I was disappointed to discover his preoccupation with cartoonish southern stereotypes. Main character Charlie Croaker belongs on an episode of Dukes of Hazards, not in a novel pretending to be an authentic examination of the modern south. And I couldn't buy the premise that an accusation of black-white date-rape would constitute any serious threat to Atlanta's racial harmony, which has survived far worse without any such fireworks. All in all, I thought the book was full of cheap southern-bashing caricatures, overblown prose, and ridiculously macho-loving scenes. One more reference to manly men and men in the full sap of their youth and I'd have tossed this book out the window of my Buckhead townhouse or my plantation manor, since Tom Wolfe seems convinced that all us southerners fit one extreme or the other. A Man in Full would be better titled "A Man Too Full Of Himself," and the man would be Tom Wolfe.

I bought this book despite many friends telling me about the racist portrayal of African American charaters. Their comments did not stop me because my love of literature would not allow me to ignore a book so highly touted. I cannot deny that many of the characters were excellently developed and the ultimate message of the author was good, however I did not appreciate the manner in which African Americans were portrayed. Wolfe's racist generalizations about the class struggles within the African American community were blown out of proportion and without any appropriate context. While these generalizations may have been due to the author's lack of knowlegde, I found them insulting. I must admit that although I was often insulted I did finish the book in about 3 days and found it enjoyable. I would advise African Americans and others of good will to wait until it comes out in paperback or better yet borrow it from the library.