Hooking Up by Tom Wolfe

Before reading this book, I had only been mildly acquainted with Wolfe after reading “O Rotten Gotham,” a selection from his 1968 book The Pump House Gang. There, Wolfe examines human interactions in New York by following around a scientist who is examining rats and their inherent space requirements.

That was a few years ago, but even then I was attracted to this technique of telling a story. In Hooking Up, I find that same sort of cultural examination. The whole book actually turns out to be one big cultural argument, either about the elite Eastern media establishment, neo-Marxist intellectuals, American artists who are unable to break away from European influence, etc. You can tell right off what Wolfe’s biases are, and what his personal opinion is about his subjects.

I think I expected too much out of this book. Because I didn’t do any research or read any reviews, I cracked its pages with a sort of over-optimism, envisioning that the book would be an American odyssey with a central theme, and the first part of this book, “Hooking Up: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the Second Millennium,” led me to believe that the book did indeed have a central theme. I expected this book to encapsulate the new millennium, coming from a man who had lived through, and wrote about, some of the most interesting aspects of it. Wolfe did not deliver.

But the book did alert me to many things about literary journalism. First, literary journalism was born out of magazines, and therefore many books are a collection of essays from these magazines. I was not aware of this, and I felt a bit ripped off.

One thing about the book that I was fascinated with was Wolfe’s portrayal of the disconnect between intellectuals and the vibrancy of America, because intellectuals “had spent the last 80 years being indignant over what a puritanical, repressive, bigoted, capitalist, and fascist nation America was beneath its democratic façade.” In “Two Young Men Who Went West,” I read it as a historical view into Silicon Valley—the human drama of how it started. But Wolfe does not just tell the history, he also puts a moral slant on the tale. His protagonist, Bob Noyce, the young genius engineer from Grinnell, Iowa, became the architect of the tech industry and basically invented the modern corporate model of empowerment, came from a conservative background. Now here’s where it gets interesting. Wolfe stretches the notion that Noyce’s ability to flourish in the revolutionary field of computers was brought about by a purely American Phenomenon: Dissenting Protestantism. This notion ties into Wolfe’s view that the artistic and intellectual hold of Europe has weighed down America: and where America has broken free of this hold, she has thrived:

“Back East, engineering was an unfashionable field. The East looked to Europe in matters of intellectual fashion, and in Europe the aristocratic bias against manual labor lived on. Engineering was looked upon as nothing more than manual labor raised to the level of science…. This piece of European snobbery had never reached Grinnell, Iowa, however…. When Noyce went West, he brought Grinnell with him…Unaccountable sewn into the lining of his coat.”

Wolfe also argues that:

“It was engineers from the supposedly backward and narrow-minded boondocks who had provided not only the genius but also the passion and the daring that won the space race and carried out John F. Kennedy’s exhortation, back in 1961, to put a man on the moon “before this decade is out”…. Time after time, these engineers had to shake off the meddling hands of timid souls back East.”

Wolfe plays on the notion that there is an Eastern establishment that controls the intellectual and artistic will of America. What I got from this book is that he believes that no one has captured the true nature of America through artistic endeavor because there has never been a truly American artistic revolution.

Wolfe concludes that it was the “backward” people—the ones modern artists and intellectuals poke fun at—who provided the passion, the inspiration that brought about some of the most sweeping changes of the century. He notes that

“Noyce happened to grow up in a family in which the light of Dissenting Protestantism still burned brightly. The light!—the light at the apex of every human soul! Ironically, it was that long-forgotten light…from out of the churchy, blue-nosed sticks…that led the world into the twenty-first century, across the electronic grid into space.”

What Wolfe does in this first article is to illuminate his vision, his interpretation of the heart of America. This becomes the backdrop for his frame of the modern American condition—physically wealthy, morally faded, still sucking on the intellectual breast of Europe. He will go on to say that writers, creative writers, fail to capture the true America because they are still looking to Europe for intellectual direction and still practicing Europe’s archaic theories. Because of this, Wolfe asserts, today’s artists confine themselves into their rooms and create art that does little more than tell the world what it looks like when artists sit in their rooms and create art. He says that the new breed of artists will feed on content.

I must say that I burned through this book, and I can definitely understand why Wolfe’s writing style has so much appeal. Some of it got boring, especially sections of his Ambush at Fort Bragg, which got way too windy, and somewhat unrealistic. But Wolfe is one hell of a writer. In the end, what appealed most to me was Wolfe’s conception of the new artists—those whose newfound inspiration is content. I was especially attracted to his image of artists sitting in their rooms and creating useless art.

Mission Statement

I am currently doing an independent study of Literary Journalism at Middle Tennessee State University. This blog will keep track of what I am reading, and, more importantly, what I am learning.

First, this study will comprise mostly of reading books and posting in this blog. I have composed a tentative reading list based on the suggestions of Dr. David Badger, my instructor who will oversee my studies and offer suggestions. Also, every title is at the MTSU library. I’ve listed these titles in the right-hand sidebar under Reading List, just below the Archives.

Granted, I would like to read other books, but, alas, I’m extremely poor and limited to what’s available for free at the library. I’m quite upset that the library has no...no!...Hunter S. Thompson books. This was the author I was most excited about, and after I decided to undertake this independent study I went immediately to check out his books. Every single one was either late, lost, or otherwise unaccounted for. One title actually showed up as "Available," but it was not in the library and nobody knew where it was. This gave me a bad feeling right off. What is it about Hunter S. Thompson books that drives students to shrug off their prompt return? Could his writing style be so dismal that it turns blooming college students into nihilists, too busy contemplating nothingness to return their library books on time?

I have listed 28 books total. When I first came up with this list I immediately went into hyperventilation. How could I read all these books in under four month and still keep up with my other studies? I felt like I should do a test run, so I checked out some books from the library and started reading them over the Christmas break.

The books were Hooking Up, And The Band Played On, In Cold Blood and Music for Chameleons. I read Hooking Up in two days. The writing style kept me so inthralled that I couldn’t put it down. If the rest of the books are anything like this one, I welcome the chance to devour them all.

In addition to this reading list, I will also read a few critical books on the subject of Literary Journalism, but I don’t want to focus on this aspect of the genre just yet. My plan is to read as much as I can without over-analyzing what I’m reading, without looking for “significance.” This is simply a matter of practicality. Being a former English major, I know how much joy can be sucked from the pages of a great book when all you think about is what you will write about. I want to read these books for their own sake, appreciate them for what they are, and judge them with a virgin eye. There’s plenty of time to critique. But I don’t want to get caught up in the “significance” game.

To keep track of my reading, I will do at least a few posts for every book I read. These won't be perfect literary analyses, because this post is as much for me to keep track of my personal thoughts as it if for public record. To some extent, this blog will be a notebook of my thoughts and experiences as I acquaint myself with this wonderful genre. Some of the posts will be gut reactions. For instance, I might write an initial post about a book before I even crack the pages. This post might include what I know about the author, what I’ve heard about the book and what I I expect from it. Then I might post some thoughts about the author’s style and literary techniques that strike me as novel.

I will also make several general posts, such as when I come across a Big Idea. For example, I might find a thread of literary techniques that connect one author to another.

Finally, my plan is to make one final, and tidy, post for each book. This post should include my final thoughts about the overall work and some conclusions about the author, the topic and the writing.

I definitely have my work cut out for me, but at this point I feel more like I’m embarking on an adventure than starting a class. So here we go...

The New Novel

The American novel is dying, not of obsolescence, but of anorexia. It needs…food. It needs novelists with huge appetites and mighty, un-slaked thirsts for…America…as she is right now. It needs novelists with the energy and the verve to approach America the way her moviemakers do, which is to say, with the ravenous curiosity and an urge to go out among her 270 million souls and talk to them and look them in the eye. If the ranks of such novelists swell, the world—even that effete corner which calls itself the literary world—will be amazed by how quickly the American novel comes to life. Food! Food! Feed me! Is the cry of the twenty-first century in literature and all the so-called serious arts in America. The second half of the twentieth century was the period when, in a pathetic revolution, European formalism took over America’s arts, or at least the non-electronic arts. The revolution of the twenty-first century, if the arts are to survive, will have a name to which no ism can be easily attached. It will be called “content.” It will be called life, reality, the pulse of the human beast.

Tom Wolfe, Hooking Up