The Good Stuff

The Right Stuff, by Tom Wolfe (Farrar, 436 pp., $12.95)

While Tom Wolfe was working on The Right Stuff, he tired of his white suits and bought a yellow one instead (which, by his own admission, set the dogs to barking and small children to rubbing their eyes when he wore it in the street). But the berserk aesthetic did not transfer itself to his prose, which is his plainest to date; almost totally absent is the accustomed ornamentation of ellipses, italics, one-line paragraphs, and machine-gun-fire exclamation points. The Right Stuff is not stylistically “original” or self-conscious, but it is shrewd, polished, and accomplished. Look at the jacket photo, man! Tom Wolfe—wearing a quietly elegant pinstripe suit, with a white silk tie and matching handkerchief: the Loud Boy of the old New Journalism, all toned down for a Locust Valley wedding!

CW

About the Author

Chilton Williamson Jr.

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The Right Stuff, by Tom Wolfe (Farrar, 436 pp., $12.95)

While Tom Wolfe was working on The Right Stuff, he tired of his white suits and bought a yellow one instead (which, by his own admission, set the dogs to barking and small children to rubbing their eyes when he wore it in the street). But the berserk aesthetic did not transfer itself to his prose, which is his plainest to date; almost totally absent is the accustomed ornamentation of ellipses, italics, one-line paragraphs, and machine-gun-fire exclamation points. The Right Stuff is not stylistically “original” or self-conscious, but it is shrewd, polished, and accomplished. Look at the jacket photo, man! Tom Wolfe—wearing a quietly elegant pinstripe suit, with a white silk tie and matching handkerchief: the Loud Boy of the old New Journalism, all toned down for a Locust Valley wedding!