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Overview
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.
Synopsis
America's maestro reporter/novelist gives America an MRI at the dawn of a new age.
Only yesterday boys and girls spoke of embracing and kissing (necking) as getting to first base. Second base was deep kissing, plus groping and fondling this and that. Third base was oral sex. Home plate was going all the way. That was yesterday. Here in the year 2000 we can forget about necking. Today's girls and boys have never heard of anything that dainty. Today's first base is deep kissing, now known as tonsil hockey, plus groping and fondling this and that. Second base is oral sex. Third base is going all the way. Home plate is learning each other's names.
And how rarely our hooked-up boys and girls learn each other's names! — as Tom Wolfe has discovered from a survey of girls' Filofax diaries, to cite but one of Hooking Up's displays of his famed reporting prowess. Wolfe ranges from coast to coast, chronicling everything from the sexual manners and mores of teenagers...to fundamental changes in the way human beings now regard themselves, thanks to the hot new fields of genetics and neuroscience...to the reasons why, at the dawn of a new millennium, no one is celebrating the second American Century. Printed here in its entirety is Ambush at Fort Bragg, a novella about sting TV which has prefigured with eerie accuracy three cases of scandal and betrayal that have lately exploded in the press, as well as Wolfe's forecasts ("My Three Stooges," "The Invisible Artist") of radical changes about to sweep the arts.
Hooking Up is a chronicle of the here and now, but for dessert it closes with the legendary,never-before-reprinted pieces about The New Yorker and its famously reclusive editor, William Shawn, which early on helped win Wolfe his matchless reputation for reportorial bravura, dead-on insight, and stylistic legerdemain — qualities everywhere evident in this gloriously no-holds-barred, un-put-downable new book.
Forbes Magazine
The finest essayist-cum-novelist-cum-reporter of our era, Wolfe combines lively writing and endless energy with an astonishingly astute, ever-curious eye.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The eminent novelist Tom Wolfe has built a literary career by writing fiction steeped in what he calls "detailed realism," where the novelist becomes a sort of reporter. His latest offering, Hooking Up, continues in that vein. It is a book in three parts: one part novella, one part memoir, one part rumination on American life at the turn of the millennium. The novella, "Ambush at Fort Bragg," grew out of research Wolfe did for his previous novel, A Man in Full, while the rest of Hooking Up details everything from his take on contemporary sexual practices among teenagers to his now-infamous scuffle with a trio of American literary luminaries, John Updike, Norman Mailer, and John Irving.From the Publisher
"At heart he is and always will be a terrific reporter. Hooking Up provides a great introduction to Wolfe the nonfiction stylist: the peerless portraitist, the contrarian social critic and the literary bomb thrower. The book's title is a sexual metaphor, but in Wolfe's hands, it means making connections among the culture's disparate corners. And nobody hooks up better than he does." --Malcolm Jones, Newsweek
"The rich retrospective of one of America's finest writers." --Michael Pakenham, Baltimore Sun
"The publication of Hooking Up, Wolfe's first book of short pieces in 20 years, is reason enough for celebration . . . Delicious." --Benjamin Svetkey, Entertainment Weekly
"Turn to the three essays grouped under the title "The Human Beast," and you will be in Wolfe heaven. The first of these--is an exuberant history of the birth of Silicon Valley...'Digibabble, Fairy Dust, and the Human Anthill' moves from the semiconductor industry to the Internet and then, by a kind of intuitive leap, to neuroscience and sociobiology. 'Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died' delves into brain imaging and the genetic determination of character. Jesuit priest Piere Teilhard de Chardin, closet Catholic Marshall McLuhan, and scientist Edmund O. Wilson are the pivotal figures of these two essays." --Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times
"I love Tom Wolfe 'Whenever some big bizarro thing happens' I want the man in the white suit to do his usual exhausting reporting, turn the labels inside out and the hypocrites upside down . . .and tell me what's what in one of those jittering, dazzling riffs of his." --Maureen Dowd, The New York Times
"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 that--especially in his nonfiction--he can still grab the brass ring." --Publishers Weekly (starred)
Michael Pakenham
The rich retrospective of one of America's finest writers. —Baltimore SunBenjamin Svetkey
The publication of Hooking Up, Wolfe's first book of short pieces in 20 years, is reason enough for celebration...Delicious. —Entertainment WeeklyForbes Magazine
The finest essayist-cum-novelist-cum-reporter of our era, Wolfe combines lively writing and endless energy with an astonishingly astute, ever-curious eye.From The Critics
It's been almost two decades since Wolfe's last collection of nonfiction. And while this book is not as spark-filled or epoch-defining as his classic books of the 1960s and ‘70s, it still hits the mark more often than not. "Digibabble, Fairy Dust and the Human Anthill" meshes Edward O. Wilson, Marshall McLuhan, Internet cheerleaders and Darwinian fundamentalists into a grand question about humanity's future. "The Invisible Artist" (about sculptor Frederick Hart) and "My Three Stooges" (namely, John Updike, Norman Mailer and John Irving) are dead-on salvos in the culture wars that call for a return to the values of the past as a means of moving forward the moribund worlds of literature and art (Wolfe might be conservative, but he's never reactionary; his mind is too sharp and ever-roving). The only letdowns of the book are a history of two early Silicon Valley pioneers (interesting but semi-generic; it's beneath Wolfe) and his novella, "Ambush at Fort Bragg," previously only published on audio. It's hard not to get a charge out of this collection, whose subject matter proves Wolfe's declaration that, "The human comedy never runs out of material! It never lets you down!"-—Chris Barsanti
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 that--especially in his nonfiction--he can still grab the brass ring. Agent, Janklow & Nesbitt Associates. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.Forbes Magazine
You will probably learn more from reading this collection of Wolfe masterpieces (two of which originally appeared in Forbes ASAP) than you did during any of your years at college. The Finest essayist-cum-novelist-cum-reporter of our era, Wolfe combines lively writing and endless energy with an astonishingly astute, ever-curious eye. He pithily, accurately probes Robert Noyce, the co-inventor of the integrated circuit, in a now-classic essay. He lays out the deadly impact of what Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed as the death of God. Wolfe discusses the rise of neurology and the notion that much of what we do is “hardwired” by the time we are born; the absurdity of our even-indignant academics and intellectuals; and the sad, pathetic state of American art and the American novel. This volume also includes Wolfe’s famous, impish, the emperor-has-no-clothes profile of the once incredibly successful, formidably prestigious The New Yorker, as well as anovella that bares the working ethics of sting TV. (2 Apr 2001)—Steve Forbes
Library Journal
In this audiobook, Wolfe (The Bonfire of the Vanities) chronicles the "here and now." He reports on everything from the creation of the Intel computer chip, the sexual activities of today's teenager, the definition of art over the ages, an in-depth look at the new field of genetics and neuroscience, and the dissolution of the human soul, as well as many other "now" topics. In fact, Wolfe takes potentially boring subjects and turns them into a verbose tour de force. That said, his style of writing is awe inspiring. Read wonderfully by the author and actor Ron Rifkin, this is highly recommended.--Marty D. Evensvold, Arkansas City P.L., KS Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.Malcolm Jones
Hooking Up provides a great introduction to Wolfe the nonfiction stylist: the peerless portraitist (Robert Noyce, Frederick Hart), the contrarian social critic ("In the Land of the Rococo Marxists") and the literary bomb thrower ("My Three Stooges").—Newsweek