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Sit back and enjoy
the ride By William McKeen, Ph.D. © Copyright 1999 William McKeen |
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This book
is everything you want a novel to be. It has great, complex characters, a
storyline that keeps you guessing and the kind of writing that makes you
want to take your TV out in the back yard and pulverize  it with a sledgehammer. Who needs that sort of
passive entertainment when Tom Wolfe proves that it's still possible for
human beings to write great novels like this?After a groundbreaking career in journalism—and such terrific nonfiction books as The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test and The Right Stuff—Wolfe wrote his first novel a decade ago. It was put-up-or-shut-up time. Ever since he had come to the nation's attention with his first book (The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby) in 1965, Wolfe had been braying about his stuff (it was called new journalism back then) and how much better it was than the crapola foisted off on the public as modern fiction. (And he didn't brag only about his stuff—he cited great nonfiction writers like Truman Capote, Joan Didion and Gay Talese as being far superior to any all-star team of novelists the literati could assemble.) But after talking about the decline of the novel for so long, it was time for Wolfe to write one. And when he did, it was a doozy. The Bonfire of the Vanities, published in 1987, was modeled on William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair, and attempted to show that a novel deeply rooted in time and place could still hold its own in the self-indulgent literary-exercise world of late 20th Century American literature. Dickens had written great novels about London, Wolfe said. Where is the great novel of 20th Century New York? Wolfe submitted Bonfire for consideration as the great novel of modern New York. The book was a raging success. Since then, Wolfe wrote a novella (Assault on Fort Bragg), had heart surgery, and went through a lot of agony over his new book. It was, of course, worth the wait.  A Man in Full is sort of like The Bonfire of the Vanities, but with likable characters. (It's also set in Atlanta. Wolfe, who knows the South well—he is from Richmond, sir—and writes of the area with his usual keen eye, but also with some great affection.) In Bonfire, readers were caught up in the troubles of Wall Street wizard Sherman McCoy, but he was a selfish, conceited man. To call journalist Peter Fallow a swine was a grave insult to our porcine friends. And Sherman's mistress, Maria Ruskin, was a horny opportunist in thong panties. The characters in the new book also have flaws, but here they are endearing. We can actually like these people. The story revolves around Charlie Croker, an Atlanta real estate tycoon who is suddenly waist deep in trouble. His bank is calling in some loans and Charlie's been having a bad spell—a half-billion-dollar bad spell. He built a monument-to-himself office complex in one of Atlanta's outer blooms, and he can't find enough tenants to make it pay. He's got a plantation he keeps in south Georgia, just for quail-hunting and Auntie Bella's homemade biscuits, and he has the usual planes, houses and paintings to watch over. Plus, he ditched his wife of 30 years for a much-younger woman and she wants to ingratiate herself to the art community by using her husband's money to sponsor a homosexual painter. Charlie's in a real mess. Despite his many flaws, it's hard to despise Charlie Croker. He's a simple lug, once poor as dirt, whose daddy worked on a plantation just like the one his son owns. Charlie could carry a football, which got him into Georgia Tech at the dawn of the 1960s, and that got him into real estate when his eligibility ended and the cheering stopped. From there on, Charlie charged through the Atlanta business world like the Georgia Bulldog defensive line. But now, the bankers have gone and blitzed him. The bankers. Even these characters, who could so easily turn into stock villains, are rich and varied in Wolfe's hands. One of the many subplots (in keeping with one of the general themes, which is infidelity) involves Charlie's bank nemesis, Ray Peepgass—once his professional friend, now trying to profit from his calamity. The bankers want cash and so Charlie decides to cut back on one of his properties, a food-merchandising business. Wolfe then takes us across the country, into the claustrophobic world of Conrad Hensley, laid off by Charlie's minions, a few months short of saving the money he needs to achieve his dream—buying a condo near his home near Oakland. While interviewing for a new job, Conrad parks precariously and his car is towed, leading to a nightmarish descent into crime worthy of one of those Hitchcock you-got-the-wrong-guy stories. All of the characters are that complex. Wolfe shows us the life of Charlie's spurned ex-wife, but doesn't set the new wife up as a cardboard cheap-shot. She too is enigmatic. There is so much in this book to like. Wolfe gets the credit for popularizing the term "good old boy" from his 1965 story "The Last American Hero." In a way, Charlie Croker is one of those 1960s good old boys who made good and may be on the verge of total collapse. You kind of have to root for this guy. Or maybe you don't. The point is, A Man in Full will introduce you to some interesting people, and you'll probably end up caring about them. You will be unable to stop reading. Like all great stories, it pulls us along because we have a need—we have to know what happens to these people. Sit back and enjoy the ride. Captain Wolfe is at the controls.
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Dr. William McKeen is journalism department chairman at the University
of Florida's College of Journalism and Communications. McKeen writes
frequently for The Orlando Sentinel book page and has authored several
books, including: