A Man In Full
By Tom Wolfe
The arrival of Tom Wolfe's second novel, at 742 pages and eleven years in the making,
is truly an epic event. Massive in scope, politically charged, and crammed with
well-drawn, hilariously flawed characters, A Man In Full proves a more than worthy
successor to Wolfe's enthralling 1987 work, Bonfire of the Vanities.
As with Bonfire, the protagonist in A Man In Full is extremely wealthy, arrogant, and
proud. Charlie Croker has spent decades building his forutne in Atlanta real estate,
working his old-fashioned Southern Georgia charm on clients, investors, and employees
alike. He has traded in his wife of forty years for a feisty young art student, amassed a
collection of five private planes including a Gulfstream jet, and (like a certain
real-life businessman known for slapping his name on everything but the port-a-johns at
his construction sites) has even named an office complex after himself.
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However, in Wolfe novels, as in the Bible, pride goeth before a fall, and Croker is
about to drop at nearly terminal velocity. His Croker Concourse is leveraged to the hilt,
yet has practically no tenants, and Croker cannot make the interest payments on his
half-BILLION-dollar loans. He's in a desperate situation, but refuses to recognize it as
such. His Southern charm and forty-year-old Georgia Tech football stories have always
bailed him out in the past, and he expects this time to be no different. He's a wealthy
Good Ol' Boy in a Big Ol' Mess, and watching him try to worm his way out of it is devilish
fun.
Attempting to woo liberal New York fitness magnate Herb Richmann as a potential tenant
of Croker Concourse, Croker invites the man to his quail plantation, a bastion of the Old
South where the servants are all African-American and refer to the master of the house as
"Cap'm Charlie." Utterly unaware of how grossly inappropriate this is, Croker
reveals the full yawning depths of his ignorance during a discussion of gay rights over
dinner (hint: he's not in favor of them).
Reading these passages, I coundn't help being reminded of another hopelessly un-PC
character: South Park's Eric Cartman. Picture Cartman fifty years older, with a Southern
background and a self-made fortune--still spewing his embarrassingly misinformed ideas
about minorities, and demanding that everyone respect his "authori-TAH"--and
you've got a pretty good image of Charlie Croker. He's endearing in spite of himself, for
he unwittingly sets such an extreme example of how NOT to behave that you can't help being
amused at the idea that someone so backward could ever actually exist.
Watching Croker's perverse mixture of blind ignorance and savage pride is half the fun
of A Man In Full; the other half is enjoying the well-drawn quirks and personalities of
the other characters with whom Croker crosses paths. Lawyer Roger White II (or Roger Too
White, as he is called by his darker-skinned African-American peers) is an intriguing mix
of insecurity and pretension. He is constantly trying to prove himself, mostly to the
white society whose lifestyle and perks he covets, but also to the fellow
African-Americans he worries he has betrayed with his aspirations. Conrad Hensley, a lowly
clerk in a freezer warehouse at one of Croker Global's subsidiaries, is poor, uneducated,
and inexperienced in the ways of life. When he is laid off as a result of one of Croker's
whims, his life turns upside down in the blink of an eye. Nevertheless, in the face of
tremendous adversity, his quiet integrity consistently proves that money and education are
no measure of a man's true character.
To be fair, Wolfe's novel is not without its flaws. The author's attempts at creating
fictitous rap lyrics and rappers are nothing short of pathetic (Doctor Rapper Doc Doc?!?
Hell, all Wolfe would have had to do was throw the word Ice in there somewhere to gain
instant credibility ...Ice Doctor, Ice Kreem, Ice Cold Brew; anything...). He's also
occasionally guilty of falling in love with his own catch-phrases, repeating them
obsessively just to make sure we recognize how clever he was to come up with them in the
first place. For example, he mentions so many times that the ideal female body shape of
the nineties is "a boy with breasts," I started to wonder whether Wolfe was
purposely trying his readers' patience, just to amuse himself on the side.
However, these are minor annoyances, which do not detract in any significant way from
the enjoyment of this vastly rewarding work of fiction.
So Mr. Wolfe, if you're out there, please don't make us wait another eleven years....
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