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.

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....