Wolfe in orbit
Powers, Thomas
forms I have been discussing is the revival of democratic about it. On the other hand, the fate of the Liberal party in Parliamentary politics itself. What is in the minds of...
...decided the can haie no response but awe...
...But it's a time very numerous-who had finally aside without etver bothering to say, be- withering portrait all the same...
...Wolfe is unique, but havtions: Tom Wolfe is a serious need for a pat on the back from him...
...if he'd been writtuosity had to do with it...
...and suggest there's no weight to the felsince Mark Twain, and the author of the Wolfe doesn't seem to have written a low, The Right Stuff is a good read but of only book about the space program generous word in his life...
...The wives of This is a grudging reaction, but Wolfe the rigor of Wolfe's pride is generally the Mercury astronauts in particular, who has certainly invited it...
...The question to be but at the same time I can't remember the fly at Mach 2? The reward is that admiraasked of The Right Stuff is whether there last landing...
...He's gone out of misunderstood...
...The right fundamental than the fussiness of the cury program itself but the impulse be- stuff, after all, was not the exclusive obstylist who can't let go...
...that good stories are told, not found...
...It was the drove Wolfe back to the beginning...
...What they did makes plained the vast undertaking begun by the something more in mind than a mere his- steeplechasers, mountain-climbers, Mercury program, the eye-to-eye tory of what happened...
...it is far too thin in lence because the scientists had satisfied leading contender for the title of world's dates, facts and source citations to serve their curiosity...
...long after it was announced on Farrar lem of rebellion in the Low Countries...
...were mainly drawn, the right stuff is curiosity -and it is astonishing tome that Wolfe's early stuff on the moon shots bravery, single-mindedness, coolness anybody could be bored by what's out was wonderful, and the drama of the and precision under pressure, an obses- there-then to those men at the apex of moon landing overshadows the first sion with what comes down to moral governments whose appetite for domiflights of Al Shepard and John Glenn, character, a passion for finding out how nance can alone make the astronauts look which naturally makes one wonder what far one can go...
...his skepticism of the hallucinogenic to think the moon program was a lot of root conviction that failure is always perenthusiasms of the '60s and of the "re- tomfoolery, a boondoggle of overreach- sonal...
...In the case of test pilots, from whole exercise suddenly seemed pointprogram, which was only the faltering whose select company the astronauts less, if not to those moved by sheer first step of the journey into space...
...motorcycle racers and teenage hot- staredown of Kennedy and Khrushchev I've been trying to remember when the doggers on the ski slopes look like timid which sent men into space, and might last moon landing took place, and why it hypochondriacs...
...Wolfe's gram did not fall into its present somnopote's Answered Prayers is currently book is not a history...
...Flying test planes was have ended in something much worse...
...The planes are accuracy...
...Nobody denies that Wolfe is bedevil social historians for a long time gram were so engulfed by teary and un- funny...
...He has been less thodoxy...
...was the last...
...The Me Decade" is going to astronauts chosen for the Mercury pro- years ago...
...He is not forever...
...Who needs a plane which can way, wrong or not...
...It wouldn't be hard to look badly paid, turned the pilots' wives into Tom Wolfe had a great deal more in mind up, but I've been trying to remember...
...This harshness, coupled with a certain ground...
...But ing conceded that, reviewers turn cool, man, the funniest American writer the argument would be purely rhetorical...
...But it is a moot question how far tinkerings with than a challenge to our national equanimity...
...rots, strange fruits and copper-colored far beyond the limits of other men they This is a book which gave Wolfe a lot savages who died so easily...
...A lot of people seem pull it out, whatever the emergency, but a way...
...The moon program died with hardly a program...
...National leaders are book is here it's easy to see what the which drove the original astronauts to the possessed by it too...
...true, one, got imaginative hold of the horror which cause he is too superficial to care, what it suspects, but harsh...
...I suspect he's a rising to the occasion...
...for Wolfe, must shrink inside when they post-Vietnam-Watergate liberal orno writer provides better value for the read about themselves...
...He will not go easy on doubtless cooked more than one dinner his way to poke a stick in the eye of the reader...
...When the Russians abandoned ject of his original Rolling Stone articles, stuff is what compels the admiration of the attempt to put a man on the moon the and concentrated instead on the Mercury equals...
...It began with a piece for Rol- New World was too far away, and turned Wolfe is talking about is the character of ling Stone five or six years ago, and not its attention to the really important prob- the species...
...It will take otherwise opposed figures as Enoch Powell on the Right and more than these reforms of Parliamentary procedure to conMichael Foot on the Left) will alter the fact that, as it now vince the people that M.P.s are much more than (in W. S. stands, Parliament is not widely respected or regarded in the Gilbert's words) a lot of dull chaps in close proximity, or that country, as the bastion of liberty or the guarantee of good the prospect of each one thinking for...
...watched it on television in Holland, and left the pilots charred trunks of unrecog- THOMAS POWERS Commonweal: 552...
...Per- ally elicited a degree of resentment phrases which stick...
...It is a work of litera- started...
...What he's like no consequence, Wolfe is incapable of which grasps just how little technical vir- as a man I can't say...
...Wolfe might argue-he never ferent from the enthusiasm which wel- of boys--and gave it a national curwould, but he might-that the first seven comed Wolfe's first book nearly fifteen rency...
...The rethe Black Panthers were models of sober erism gone wild, spendthrift, grandiose ward is not a new plane...
...Some pilot failure was always Watergate, and the first squeeze in the But the last trip escapes me entirely, de- squeezed out of the blindest set of facts aorta of oil-but Wolfe's prickly inde- spite the fact I wondered at the time, and and the "accident" was blamed on overpendence will not recognize the obvious...
...The space prothe literary marketplace...
...Captain Astronaut...
...they were just getting most long-delayed book, but Wolfe's any such purpose...
...was the pilot's gift to the people on the means...
...Blind reaching was behind the space Straus's fall list as a forthcoming book...
...man up, but it doesn't seem to have had constitutional collision embedded in That is not a point which needs laboring...
...bombing North Vietnam, a few years result is that feviewers who ought to He does not actually name the astronauts ago, was a breathtaking exercise in perknow better conclude Wolfe doesn't re- who went a bit wild with all the girls versity...
...The book he knows why...
...On the other hand, the fate of the Liberal party in Parliamentary politics itself...
...Wolfe had were purely crazy...
...that effect...
...Wolfe has a cable book...
...I don't think any such thing, only toys...
...What is in the minds of those recent elections seems to suggest that people are not much drafting the proposals is the recognition that, as things are more interested in the fundamental reforms, such as the intronow, Parliamentary democracy is largely a sham...
...Not even Queen Victoria could to come...
...but merciless results in print...
...One long scatological passage in The Right Stuff, a description of Pete Conrad duckwalking WOLFS IN ORBIT to the men's room after a barium enema, rises to a comic intensity unequaled by OUR MERCURIAL INTERESTS Rabelais...
...The than ferocious where they are concerned...
...At its heart the right second...
...The From one point of view these men chemistry of the Cold War which %exanswer is artistic discipline...
...He is de- dazzled by the astronaut aura, nor does to the pilots which Wolfe had in mind as scribed, and in the end dismissed, as a he quite reach full throttle with the vanity he described their bravery and skill, but raw exploiter of his material, a kind of of the wives in their role as The Honora- the shrill fury of all those people-by that literary robber baron, who casts the husk ble Mrs...
...It seems to be a matter of pride...
...while the snowy image did not set my nizable meat...
...they can tolerate anyproblem was...
...In the early 1960s he ception and humor, yes, but nothing sof- among the writers about writers quite dif- took a Southern colloquialism-"good ter...
...himself is anything other government...
...Wolfe has scrapped every- quite extraordinary lengths Wolfe de- thing but the humiliation of finishing thing about the moon program, the sub- scribes so vividly...
...I ing regularity in jet-fuel infernos which me as having got it just about right...
...Truman Ca- in the nature of the right stuff...
...He will dazzle and entertain...
...The same might be said of As a writer Wolfe does not have a aloof pugnacity toward all that is sacred Wolfe's article on "The Me Decade," likable persona, and The Right Stuff (Far- to the right-thinking, socially earnest lib- which cast the 1970s as a time of hisrar, Straus, Giroux, $12.95) is not a lika- eral intelligentsia_a class broad enough trionic self-absorption...
...If a man is good enough, if he has volutionary chic" which briefly elevated ing, a terminal case of American boost- the right stuff, he'll never fail...
...jellied anxiety, and ended with horrify- than telling funny stories, and he strikes The first certainly sticks in my mind...
...Christopher Lasch was only the 12 October 1979: 551 first victim in The Culture of Narcissism...
...It's well-known decent fellow, and that his subjects have ing about Columbus instead, the book that Wolfe's eye is wicked, and his artis- a terrible time trying to square the would have been filled with Italian try is recognized by everyone who knows warmth of his interest as a man with the dialect jokes...
...But Wolfe will go his own and hollow...
...had to conduct the experiments, were which won't get written is a perennial of The answer, of course, is to be found only window dressing...
...the workings of Parliament can make people feel differently BRIAN WICKER Of several minds: Thomas Powers have resisted his manic flights...
...One piece about Navy pilots money, but Wolfe will not explain...
...At the conclusion of that passage Queen Victoria would have required LET ME BEGIN with a few bald asser- critical emotional assent they have no smelling salts...
...You can be sure it wasn't justice ally know what he's about...
...All the fruits of scientific inBut the announcement was not followed whisper of regret, and Tom Wolfe thinks quiry, so much resented by the pilots who by the book, more than once...
...But the impulse to reach faded legendary facility suggested The Right ture which must stand or fall as a cohe- when the race with the Russians ceased to Stuff was blocked by something more rent.text, and its subject is not'the Mer- have moment in the Cold War...
...The Vikings, after all, stopped The right stuff was not only an ability to always wrong when he goes his own sailing to America...
...There is not an ounce of kind- to include the present writer-has gradu- pacity for inventing, or resurrecting, ness, sympathy, or generosity in it...
...It's a bit as if the Court of tion by one's equals which comes for is anything more in it than a lot of funny Spain grew bored with Columbus's par- having the right stuff, from pressing so passages and a phrase bound to stick...
...What of trouble...
...No amount duction of proportional representation into the electoral system of belief in the sheer power of oratory (a belief shared by such itself, which might be expected to do the job better...
...Now that the hind it, the unreflecting competitiveness session of test pilots...
...You might think the oblitThe '70s witnessed at least two major heart pounding it was perfectly obvious eration of a friend or two would sober a dislocations of lasting significance-the this was an event of the first magnitude...
...The man is so funny he makes you weep...
...still wonder now, if it was the last sight, or panic, or a second's indecision...
...like passive underachievers...
Vol. 106 • October 1979 • No. 18
