Tom Wolfe's name is now so well known that the cover of his new collection bears just that: Tom Wolfe's name. No title, no picture, just the name, with an elegant design twining through it. Flip the thing on its side and you'll find that its title, Hooking Up, gives little idea of its function. But investigation soon reveals an oleo of reportage, fiction, and acrimonious name-calling. The latter, of course, makes for the best reading. In "My Three Stooges," Wolfe reviles the three big men of American letters--Updike, Mailer, and Irving--who cast aspersions on his second novel. Apparently, "the allergens for jealousy were present. Both Updike and Mailer had books out at the same time as A Man in Full, and theirs had sunk without a bubble. With Irving there was the Dickens factor." Wolfe gets in a lot of figures about what a big hit his book was with the reading public, and a few gentle reminders about other writers who were big hits of their times--little guys like Twain and Tolstoy.

Equally bitter fun are his two famous 1965 satires from the New York Herald Tribune. As always, Wolfe's titles lead you a good way into the actual stories: "Tiny Mummies! The True Story of the Ruler of 43rd Street's Land of the Walking Dead!" and "Lost in the Whichy Thickets: The New Yorker." Wolfe, clotheshorse of note, gets off some of his best cracks at the expense of New Yorker editor William Shawn's fashion sense: "He always seems to have on about twenty layers of clothes, about three button-up sweaters, four vests, a couple of shirts, two ties, it looks that way, a dark shapeless suit over the whole ensemble, and white cotton socks." The rest of the reported pieces are unexceptional, and while the novella Ambush at Fort Bragg makes the most of its setting--a Dateline-like newsmagazine--it lacks the irresistible momentum required to drag most readers into a novella. Still, it's fun to watch the author reprise his lifelong role of unlikely underdog: between his sniping at the literary elite and his mocking of the precious New Yorker set, Tom Wolfe makes like a defender of the common man. --Claire Dederer


From 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 thatDespecially in his nonfictionDhe can still grab the brass ring. Agent, Janklow & Nesbitt Associates. (Oct..--" and thatDespecially in his nonfictionDhe can still grab the brass ring. Agent, Janklow & Nesbitt Associates. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From 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.DMarty D. Evensvold, Arkansas City P.L., KS Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
Trendy intellectual drivel of the new century is presented with convincing middle-brow eloquence by the bestselling dandy of "new journalism." Part reportage, part essays, these articles cover the latest news to reach the author in the fields of biological, social, and informational science. Always a lively, albeit untrustworthy, read, Wolfe is not always a good listen. His flat voice needs his personal presence before a live audience to rise to the level of his writing. Fortunately (and inexplicably), after delivering some criticism of his critics, he bows out in favor of Ron Rifkin. This fine actor is not on sure ground here, fuddling through some of Wolfe's less felicitous locutions, but by and large gives us the vivid momentum that the text demands. Y.R. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Wolfe-man steps up to bat again, this time with a collection of essays. Although these essays are not as fully provocative as his novels, they are still quite demonstrative of his feistiness. One of the most inciting is "My Three Stooges," in which Wolfe discusses the writing of and critical and popular response to his novel A Man in Full. Wolfe takes out after three eminent novelists--John Updike, Norman Mailer, and John Irving--who had bad things to say about this particular work. He refers to them as his three stooges, a stooge being "literally a straight man who feeds lines to the lead actor in a play. My three stooges were so upset by A Man in Full, they were feeding me lines I couldn't have dreamed up if they had asked me to write the script for them." In another essay, "Hooking Up," Wolfe ponders America's obsession with youth and American youth's sexual precocity. The early part of the Silicon Valley story is told in "Two Young Men Who Went West." These and other essays are not simply brief exercises but well-developed, factual, and informative narratives on a wide range of cultural topics. Appearing here, too, is a novella, "Ambush at Fort Bragg," about a military gay-bashing incident and how a TV show is investigating it; the novella is not any less pungent a piece of writing than the essays. Expect demand for this book by a very popular or at least much-talked-about author. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Benjamin Svetkey, Entertainment Weekly
"The publication of Hooking Up, Wolfe's first book of short pieces in 20 years, is reason enough for celebration...Delicious."


Review
"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)



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."


Michael Pakenham, Baltimore Sun
"The rich retrospective of one of America's finest writers."


Review
"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)



Book Description
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.



Download Description
America's maestro reporter/novelist gives America an MRI at the dawn of a new age. In "Hooking Up", 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 inner workings of television's magazine-show sting operations.


About the Author
Tom Wolfe is the author of more than a dozen books, among them such contemporary classics as The Electric Kool-Aid Test, The Right Stuff, The Bonfire of the Vanities, and A Man
in Full. A native of Richmond, Virginia, he earned his B.A. at Washington and Lee
University and a Ph.D. in American Studies at Yale. He lives in New York City.

FROM OUR EDITORS

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

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.

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.

FROM THE CRITICS

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.

Benjamin Svetkey

The publication of Hooking Up, Wolfe's first book of short pieces in 20 years, is reason enough for celebration...Delicious. —Entertainment Weekly

Michael Pakenham

The rich retrospective of one of America's finest writers. —Baltimore Sun

Book Magazine

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 ￯﾿ﾽ70s, 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