A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe

A Man in Full Reviews

• 
  Baba

  More Wolfe genius as he turns his eye on the Afro American and 'Southern WASP' dominated Atlanta with fantastic characters such as black, Roger 'Too-White'; quasi crooked broker Peepgas; ne'er do well for trying Conrad; Southern wheeler dealer against the ropes Charlie Croker, a smart and devious black Mayor; Croker's ex-wife now invisible in polite society; and his current young and 'hot' wife and many more, as their lives are all impacted on when the daughter of a high profile and very wealthy man claims she was raped by the black up and coming star sportsman of Atlanta. Stupendously well-written, truly a tour-de-force. Exceptional! A 9 out of 12, strong Four Star read fo rme.
  
  ...also if done right, like the book, this will blow up on Netflix next year with
  David E Kelly and
  Regina King holding the reins! Some of the confirmed cast:
  
  
  2014 read
• 
  Steve Lowe

  Dear Tom Wolfe,
  
  I am writing to you now about your insistence on describing what every character is wearing in every scene of your 741-page epic, A Man in Full. I am convinced that, had you chosen to avoid doing such a thing as describe each cut of cloth, each brand name, each sartorial style, and its significance based on the character or the setting, etc., this book could have been a much crisper, much leaner, much more manly 400 pages.
  
  Sincerely, Steve
  
  But I guess that’s what you get when a foppish little dandy such as this:
  
  [image error]
• 
  Mark Porton

  A Man in Full, by Tom Wolfe is my first foray into the work of this author, I am so glad a GR friend recommended this book to me, otherwise Mr Wolfe would have passed me by.
  
  It’s BIG. At around 750 pages, and for me, being a slow reader, this is a book I would usually baulk at – however, if the book is good enough, it doesn’t matter how long it is. This book is good enough.
  
  The story involves a real estate developer called Charlie Croker, who finds himself in a bit of a pickle regarding his excessive debt and is facing bankruptcy. It's not a story that would normally interest me, but this author throws in a whole bunch of characters, with complex stories that somehow seem to tie together at the end. The author surrounds the hapless Charlie with all-sorts of interesting beings such as politicians, lawyers, racists, all sorts of family members and ex-family members, labourers, criminals, sports stars and quails
  
  Each character is extremely well developed, and all have fascinating stories to tell – many of whom could well be a protagonist in their own book. I did find myself wondering as I ploughed through this dense work, “how the hell is this author going to get this lot to mean something to each other?” – but he did. He achieved this seemingly impossibly task, and he did it with credibility. The pace of the story was also brilliant. His writing had a real rhythm to it, and I was rivetted.
  
  It takes places in Atlanta, and as someone who has never been there, I did find this a wonderful way to learn about this city and its surrounds and it’s history, racism, slavery, corporate America, poverty and a real dose of the disparity between the rich and the poor – all this, without being preachy.
  
  My favourite character must be Conrad, the lad with massive arms and hands (no less) he embarks on an amazing journey in this story. In fact, there was one scene that reminded me very much of the movie Falling Down, starring Michael Douglas. I really felt for Conrad. He was a good egg, but the world just seemed to keep pushing him – poor lad. Wolfe also was very clever in the way he weaved Stoic Philosophy into this story, yep Epictetus and the work of other Stoics from antiquity – who would’ve thunk?
  
  It’s good this author doesn’t charge by the word, as he uses a lot of them. Copious quantities of words to describe each scene, each item of clothing, every piece of furniture – you name it, in such great detail. My usual preferred authors describe scenes, things, and places more sparsely, thinly even. Not this guy. He showers you with the whole kit and caboodle, but it really worked for me, I truly enjoyed the detail. It must be excellent writing.
  
  Perhaps the story is a bit blokey (but then again Charlie Croker is one helluva bloke), and the boardroom politics and players can be that way inclined, regrettably.
  
  Wolfe did make me laugh at times. He has a wicked way with words, particularly when describing people. I did find this aspect of his writing very funny, albeit usually disparaging to the subject, but still funny.
  
  Overall, it's a really good read and totally enjoyable. I would give it 4.5 stars – rounded down because I can’t give it 5.
  
  4 Stars
• 
  Sean

  This book is Tom Wolfe's Masterpiece. I have read The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test and The Bonfire of the Vanities and this is by far his greatest accomplishment. I was surprised to read the reviews saying the book is contrived and predictable. I thought is was an engaging commentary on American culture. Tom Wolfe is first and foremost a social commentator and this book is no exception. I generally avoid modern authors as the contemporary authors are weak writers, this book is awesome. Ignore the self-righteous pretentious reviewers. Tom Wolfe is awesome.
• 
  Paul Bryant

  This big big novel is all about big big things. Our 60 year old property developer cracker millionaire-teetering-on-the-very-edge-of-bankruptcy Charlie Croker is big all over; his trophy wife Serena has big hair and whilst many of her other attributes are tiny (waist, wrists) a couple of them are also big. Her main task is to stroke Charlie’s vast money with her exquisitely tiny hands and cast loving glances over him with her big eyes while he makes his big deals. Charlie builds big big buildings, naturally, all over Atlanta, which is a big city. Charlie and every other bigshot lives in a very big house. And to get the plot going along comes a big problem for the mayor of Atlanta featuring a big sports star who’s black and the daughter of another Atlanta bigshot who’s white and who’s making an accusation of rape. Uh oh, this could be big trouble. Can Charlie head it off at the pass?
  
  Every other reviewer mentions two painful things that Tom Wolfe does constantly throughout the 750 pages - a character cannot make an appearance without Tom minutely describing what they are wearing; and they can’t step into a room without Tom minutely describing the wallpaper and every last stick of furniture in it, along with the name of the interior designer’s favourite dog.
  So there’s that, but there’s another even more annoying thing Tom does. I could not see why his editor did not tell him to cut this stupidity right out, but maybe if you’re Tom your editor is too scared to suggest anything, so it would be the same reason that Paul McCartney made so many very bad solo albums. No John Lennon around to cast withering glances.
  
  This third thing is where Tom gives us a phonetic version of deep South English pronounciation whenever there’s a character with a strong accent. As if none of us, the readers, have the slightest notion of what a deep South accent sounds like. Yes, we have never been to the movies or watched tv at all!
  
  P 316:
  
  “Figure out who goes in which cars, and you all head on home. I’m gon be tied up here for a spell.” Spale.
  
  “We can’t let you back on the plane, Mr Croker. We’re here to arrest it, pursuant to a court order.” Coat awda.
  
  P317
  
  “He got hired by the fire department” came out “He got hard by the Far Department”
  
  P320
  
  “Hell” - hale - “the easiest way is, slide a wrench down the intake of an engine.”
  
  P322
  
  “Where are” - whirr- “the pilots?”
  
  This goes on intermittently throughout the whole novel, from page first to page last (layast). It’s very tiresome. By page 100 we had got the idea – these people down in Georgia sure do talk funny. Alright already.
  
  Tom saves his most egregious mistake until the very end, however. This is spoilerish so if anyone is going to read this soon, look away now. But the idea of Charlie Croker suddenly getting religion, and not only religion but a weird cult version involving Roman Stoic philosophers, is just too silly and something of an insult to the poor reader who has ploughed all the way through. It was like a chess player kicking over the table because the game had become too difficult.
  
  So…… four stars?
  
  Well, what can I say, I had too much fun reading this novel! I could see all these things wrong with it and yet… and yet… Tom is such good company! He thinks he can do anything and go anywhere – Hawaiian gangster pidgin? No problem. How to put together a quasi-legal syndicate in the British Virgin Islands? Got that too. He is endlessly ebullient, insouciant and all those other things which add up to wanting to pick up a 750 page novel at every opportunity for days at a time.
  
  Short version : the best bad novel for a long long time.
• 
  AiK

  Несуразность этого романа бьёт в глаза. Но давайте начнем по порядку. Название романа говорит нам о том, что роман посвящен мужчине, выпрямившемуся, не согнувшемуся под тяжестью житейских проблем. Один из героев, адвокат Роджер, защищающий звезду американского футбола, обвиненного в изнасиловании, (на самом деле футболист афроамериканец, а девушка - белая, дочь магната, которая сама прыгнула в постель), восклицает : "У мужчин тоже есть права". Да, у мужчин очень много прав, особенно, у белых, богатых мужчин, и главный герой - Чарльз Крокер, именно такой. Он был успешным застройщиком, набрал долгов на полмиллиарда долларов и находился в предбанкротном состоянии, не имея возможности расплатиться. Он был когда-то матёрым альфа-самцом, чемпионом, удачливым бизнесменом.
  Несмотря на большой объем, несколько сюжетных линий, обилие героев, этот маскулинный роман довольно прост и такое многословие неоправданно.
  Автор рассматривает четырех мужчин разных рас и достатка и переплетает их судьбы в романе, раскрывая всю примитивность их жизненных целей и устремлений, такие как секс, деньги, полный набор индикаторов успеха, власть, политика, попутно поднимая темы насилия, расизма, сговора для защиты в суде, тюремных порядков, порядков ведения бизнеса, браков богатых стариков на юных красавицах, правах брошенных старых жен богатых стариков и очень много чего ещё.
  Вопросы осуждения расизма, поднимаемые из уст белого, не звучат так же убедительно, как из уст цветного. Такое ощущение, что автор пытается доказать то, что в доказательстве не нуждается, что не все белые - расисты.
  Униженный и оскорбленный, как непосредственно несправедливой бюрократической системой, которая может морально и материально раздавить обывателя, так и равнодушием своей семьи, ещё один мужской персонаж Конрад находит утешение в чтении Эпиктета, позволяющее ему сохранить достоинство в тюрьме, в которой все построено на базовом принципе унижения человеческого достоинства.
  Автор подвергает критике гомофобство, с одной стороны, и мужеложство в тюрьме, когда криминальный авторитет, будучи гетеросексуалом, удовлетворяет себя с гомосексуалистом, насильно и с обязательным унижением. Конраду удается победить тюремного авторитета, в том числе с помощью философии стоиков, которой он проникся.
  Ему удается бежать из тюрьмы, и он волею судьбы встречается с Чарли, который только что перенес операцию на колене, нуждается в моральной опоре и такой опорой ему становится философия стоиков. Кем он, бывший миллионер и альфа-самец Чарли стал, как Вы думаете? Проповедником стоицизма. Героев и сюжетных линий много - и бывшая жена, сошедшаяся с менеджером среднего звена банка, который был кредитором Чарльза, и молодая жена, оставившая его после утраты состояния, и мэр, и семьи мужчин-героев, и обитатели тюрьмы, вьетнамские мигранты.
  К слову, женские персонажи совершенно плоски - автор описывает их внешность и фигуру подробнее, чем их характеры. Роман скорее не понравился, чем понравился.
• 
  Lyn

  Tom Wolfe’s 1998 novel was a finalist for the National Book Award (Alice McDermott’s Charming Billy won the award that year). It’s that good.
  
  Less epic in scope than was his brilliant 1987 novel Bonfire of the Vanities, this is nonetheless an excellent, well written account of some shenanigans and tomfoolery in Georgia.
  
  A hallmark of Wolfe’s great talent was his Dickensian characterization and here we meet a bevy of colorful players, with the Ole Jersey Bull Charles Croker front and center.
  
  We all know Croker, a former athlete who traded his glory years on the grid iron for a career of backroom negotiated sales – for our protagonist a successful time as a real estate developer. Until the floor caved in and as we meet the old Georgia Tech Yellowjacket star, known affectionally by his many plantation employees as Captain Charlie, he is “this close” to bankruptcy and the bank has already begun to feast on the bloated corpse of his fortune.
  
  The consequences of over speculation cast ripples far across the pond and we also meet Conrad, one of Croker’s employees in a frozen food warehouse in Oakland California whose life is forever changed when he is laid off. Conrad’s tenuous journey is highlighted by a discovery of Stoic philosophy that he will coincidentally share with Captain Charlie.
  
  We also get to know Roger “Too” White, a successful Atlanta lawyer, who is brought into an alleged rape case because he was college friends with the mayor. All of our characters are drawn into a bedlam of racial tension when the current Tech star gets himself sideways of white Atlanta business power.
  
  Wolfe also is able, in almost Conradian fashion, to illustrate the fragile nature of our society, to reveal the thin veneer of civilization, and to show how base prejudices and primitive impulses control us more than we like to admit.
  
  A good writer can make us think, but a great writer can make us feel and that is what Wolfe has done, every page crawling with discomfort as the characters navigate the difficult waters of race, privilege, politics, money and power.
  
  Recommended.
  
  
• 
  Daniel

  Ah, what to say about this book that the other reviewers haven't already said?
  
  One thing - this book seems to be present wherever used books are sold. Every old shop has a surplus of them. It's always on the dollar shelves at book sales. Even at the local thrift stores, it's there, sitting right next to Lonesome Dove and Tim Allen's autobiography.
  
  This book must find its way to second-hand shelves because it's both big AND mainstream. In the age of quick-selling novellas, there aren't many authors who dare to produce leviathan-sized novels. Sure, there's Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and David Foster Wallace. They all have their own digressive coffee-house style, their fanciful artsyness. Some people read their novels for bragging rights. They place them in conspicuous spots as conversation pieces. When you finish "Against the Day," or "Underworld," or "Mason-Dixon," you don't want to forget your accomplishment. Some prefer to revel in it and lord it over others. Perhaps this is why Wallace and Pynchon don't make it to thrift store shelves as frequently as Wolfe.
  
  "A Man in Full" is a different kind of big book. It is extremely earnest and unaffected. In some ways, it belongs more to the traditions of the 19th century than to the 20th.
  
  Tom Wolfe avoids the narrative flourishes of his contemporaries and uses old-fashioned and unsubtle plot devices. The cast of characters is Dickensian - there's a tycoon, a young worker, a scheming banker, a well-heeled lady, and a debutante. There's a prison break, a bankers' shakedown, many backroom deals, dramatic changes of heart. Wolfe uses lots of satirical wordplay, which when applied to 20th century popular culture seems slightly contrived (viz. Wolfe's take on rap music.) But for my money, there's not a better name for a banker than Raymond Peepgass. And the tycoon's faux-plantation is named Turpmtine. Turp-em-tine.
  
  At first the characters' interactions are hopelessly stereotypical. The tycoon is egotistical and tone-deaf, causing the self-loathing banker to plot his downfall. The tycoon's ex wife, though living in glorious southern style, feels lonely and despondent in her middle years. Then, through a combination of implausible events, the lives of the worker and the tycoon collide and in this collision Wolfe reveals his moral message, which is (appropriately) couched in classical philosophy.
  
  The themes Wolfe chooses to address - race, power, greed, redemption, and the state of American society - are baldly exposed in the first few chapters of "A Man in Full." Wolfe loves front-line reportage, and his unsubtle style is one of his strengths. There are many spot-on observations in this book, and were it not for its similarity to "Bonfire of the Vanities," "A Man in Full" might have been more widely admired for its perceptiveness.
  
  But back to the size of the book.
  
  Set against a row of contemporary fiction, this hardcover makes other books look off-puttingly puny. It is big enough to give most 20th century fiction an inferiority complex. Yet it's not a book people keep around to brag about. It is an ambitious book and very engaging to read, but it's not a literary ground-breaker. It can't claim the creative cachet of a Pynchon or a Wallace. It contains no shocking conspiracy theories for readers to discuss at dinner parties; it doesn't "subvert the literary paradigm" or do anything radical with the language. It is, however, a very insightful and entertaining read, very much worth the 750 pages it fills. For its un-cynical examination of well-worn topics, it is a significant and relevant book worthy of anyone's shelves.
  
  
  
  
  
• 
  David Putnam

  This is a great book in style, and voice and with the prison, the earthquake and the character who spoke Hawaiian pigeon. Not for everyone but I sure enjoyed it.
  
  d.
• 
  Perry

  Major whiff at satire of Atlanta society. Wholly unlikable cast of stick characters, within jagged story lines that seemed pasted together. The book displays a significant disconnectedness with and misunderstanding of Southern U.S. culture that is inexcusable in satire. Moreover, the thematic thread of Stoicism appeared mostly forced and exposed illogical and gaping gaps in the novel's arc.
  
  The worst of the three Tom Wolfe novels I've read (Bonfire of the Vanities, 5 stars; I Am Charlotte Simmons, 3 stars).
  
  In a word,
  
  Sad. The novel as a whole, not its story or me upon finishing it.
  
  And, bad.
• 
  Thomas

  Tom Wolfe hat mich mit "Ein ganzer Kerl" 1080 eng bedruckte Taschenbuchseiten lang gefesselt. Selbst wenn die Geschichte einmal Längen hatte, hat der Autor es geschafft, mich durch seine im Journalismus geschulte Sprache bei der Stange zu halten. Die Erzählweise ist konventionell, aber durch die Plastizität, mit der Ereignisse, Dialoge und Gedanken geschildert werden, durchweg spannend.
  
  Thematisiert werden sowohl Konflikte zwischen Schwarz und Weiß, als auch zwischen hellhäutigen und dunkelhäutigen Schwarzen. Es geht um Politik, Wirtschaft, Geld, Schulden, Macht. Im Zentrum der in Atlanta angesiedelten Geschichte steht der alt gewordene Immobilienhai Charlie Croker. Sein letztes Projekt war ein Fehlschlag und hat ihn hoch verschuldet. Conrad Hensley ist einer der aus Kostengründen von Croker entlassenen Arbeiter. Raymond Peepgass ist ein leitender Bankangestellter, der mit einem Insidergeschäft illegal von der Situation Crokers profitieren möchte. Anwalt Roger Too White kennt Bürgermeister Wesley Dobbs Jordan aus der College-Zeit. Jordan versucht mit Whites Hilfe, Rassenunruhen zu verhindern. Dazu wird die Unterstützung von Charlie Croker benötigt.
  
  Tom Wolfe ist es gelungen, eine Welt mit unvergesslichen Charakteren zu erschaffen, in der alles mit allem auf natürliche Weise verbunden ist. Sprache spielt für die Geschichte eine große Rolle. Zentral ist der Südstaatenslang in unterschiedlichen (schwarzen und weißen) Varianten. In der Übersetzung werden teils einzelne Worte oder auch ganze Sätze mit wie nebensächlich fallengelassenen Erläuterungen eingeordnet. Das stört den Lesefluss nicht, hilft aber für das Verständnis der handelnden Personen.
  
  Wolfe hat vier Romane geschrieben. "Ein ganzer Kerl" war sein zweiter Roman. Für mich war es der vierte und damit leider auch der letzte Wolfe-Roman. Mir haben alle seine Romane ausgezeichnet gefallen. Mein Favorit bleibt aber "Fegefeuer der Eitelkeiten". Das liegt vor allem daran, dass es nicht nur Wolfes erster Roman war, sondern auch der erste, den ich von ihm gelesen habe. Das ist also eher nostalgisch begründet. "Ich bin Charlotte Simmons", "Back to Blood" und auch "Ein ganzer Kerl" sind auf demselben hohen Niveau.
• 
  Shel

  Interesting story. I enjoyed it. I like the parallel stories of Conrad and Charlie. I would have like the ending to be a bit more fleshed out but still good.
• 
  رزی - Woman, Life, Liberty

  از این کتاب هفتصد صفحه‌ای من یه بخش سه صفحه‌ایش رو ترجمه کردم. این بخش توصیفی از انسان یا به عبارت دقیق‌تر "مرد" عه. خوشحال می‌شم بخونین و نظرتونم بگین. امیدوارم لذت ببرین :>
  
  
  دانلود داستان
• 
  Ron Charles

  For the characters in Tom Wolfe's new novel, "A Man in Full," it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. For us, though, it's just the best of times. America has found its Charles Dickens.
  
  This book is as full of bravado as its brawling hero, Atlanta's most successful real-estate developer. The outlandish Charlie Croker bristles with masculinity, bulges with power, and boasts a back like a Jersey bull.
  
  Bestriding his 29,000-acre plantation, Charlie can't imagine that the cash-flow troubles of his downtown colossus, the Croker Concourse, could ever threaten his one-man empire.
  
  Though it costs millions of dollars a year to maintain the herd of thoroughbred horses, the meadows of quail, and his young second wife, Charlie knows that this antebellum fantasy is the perfect setting for conquering clients. Besides, a real man "deserves a quail plantation." And a few jets.
  
  In fact, this novel is preoccupied with what a real man is and deserves. It will be interesting to watch the critical and popular response to a book that focuses so exclusively on male definition - both physical and ethical - while the few women characters are consigned to the wings or, worse, to ancient misogynist stereotypes.
  
  Meanwhile, the men who fill this novel are memorable types but never clichs. Wolfe knows how to build masculine characters from the outside in, with comic physical descriptions that reveal their personalities. Inman Armholster, for instance, a pharmaceutical baron who built his empire on pills, "seemed to be made of a series of balls piled one atop the other. His buttery cheeks and jowls seemed to rest, without benefit of a neck, upon the two balls of fat that comprised his chest, which in turn rested upon a great swollen paunch."
  
  Wolfe's enormous strength is his ability to tell a story, a skill so basic but missing from a surprising number of so-called "literary" novels with multiple narrators, surreal descriptions, and obscure themes. In this mammoth book, Wolfe has a fantastic yarn to tell, and he races through ironic plot parallels at breakneck speed.
  
  While Charlie intimidates his wealthy guests by wrestling rattlesnakes on the plantation, a sophisticated black lawyer, nicknamed Roger Too White, is meeting with the football coach from Georgia Tech. The coach has a tricky problem: His star player, a monosyllabic thug named Fareek Fanon, perhaps the most promising football player in America, may have raped the daughter of Atlanta's most powerful businessman.
  
  In this racially divided city, the case is a firebomb ready to explode. For Roger Too White, the assignment provides a chance to ascend even higher in the pantheon of White Establishment, while also aligning himself with the forces of Black Power.
  
  He's assisted by Atlanta's politically bilingual mayor, who immediately realizes such a rape case could threaten the fragile peace he maintains between the city's vocal black majority and its wealthy white minority.
  
  Wolfe's panoramic study of Atlanta - from the burnt-out ghettos crawling with junkies to the palatial corporate offices covered with Persian rugs - won't let us forget that the fundamental issue in American society is the relationship between whites and blacks. In "A Man in Full," the plantations haven't receded into the past as we'd like to imagine.
  
  Wolfe keeps wrestling with the moral challenges that modern life presents amid the promise and chaos of so much material wealth.
  
  The white real estate baron watching his empire collapse, the black lawyer grasping for white respect, the bored loan officer fending off an angry mistress, the terrified prisoner fighting for his life - their experiences couldn't be more different. But Wolfe ingeniously forces these paths to converge so that we realize, as one laid-off Croker worker says, "The only real possession you'll ever have is your character."
  
  Only a writer who can handle wit and cynicism as deftly as Wolfe could pull off such a daringly moral novel at the end of the 20th century. Fin de sicle, you've met your match.
  
  
  http://www.csmonitor.com/1998/1112/11...
• 
  Mikey B.

  This is an uproarious and energized story of America. For over 700 pages Tom Wolfe sustains and enthralls you. The momentum never stops.
  
  There are myriad unforgettable confrontations and scenes – who can forget the bankers meeting, the jail settings (particularly the phone conversation), the breeding barn... The different classes of America meet and clash – super rich and middle class, black and white, clashes within black society (like who is blacker?), conservative and liberal, southerner and northerner...
  
  Our main man is Charlie Croker. He is a flawed southern throwback whose real estate empire is collapsing and the banks are moving in for a relentless kill. He is over-loaded with a hubris that is under siege from all sides. There is a swirl of activity around him as city power factions attempt to manipulate him – to save the city of Atlanta from a potential racial conflagration.
  
  Mr. Wolfe is not afraid to play any volatile card - be it race, sex, politics or class standing (as in who you are, is what you possess – be it property, women, houses, an enterprise...).
  
  We get a wide kaleidoscopic canvas of American life at the end of the 20th Century. The settings vary from southern plantations, to ghettoes, to prisons and small suburban homes.
  
  As a caveat:
  I am not sure which side Tom Wolfe is on – and I don’t think he favours any of his characters.
  The book is very male-centric (something the author tried to correct with his next book
  I am Charlotte Simmons)
  Don’t look for long introspective meditation; that is not the style of Tom Wolfe.
  
  Page 643 (my book)
  
  On almost every wall surface of the house were ... dolls and porcelain figurines. There were hundreds of them, possibly thousands. There were wooden knickknack shelves attached to the walls and filled with dolls, old ones, new ones, astronaut dolls, African dolls, Filipino dolls, Polynesian dolls. There were dolls resting on little knickknack shelves that went around each doorframe and every window, all chosen for the matching or harmonious colors of their clothes, dolls of old people as well as children, dolls of famous people such as Mark Twain, Genghis Khan, and Albert Einstein... The most beautifully colored ones – and some were extravagant examples of the porcelain maker’s art – were arranged on wooden knickknack shelves, like the dolls. The arrangements were precise. The gradations in size were pleasing. Nothing was out of place. Despite the vast number of objects, you were immediately struck by the unity and good taste of this exhibition of a lifetime of collecting.
  
  Page 543
  
  [Ray] Peepgass opened his manila envelope and took out the elaborate full color brochure Croker Global had produced as the calling card for its leasing campaign. He let Harvey take a good look at the picture on the front. It was one of those architectural photographs that are so super-sharp in detail, they make you blink. The paper it was printed on was so thick, so rich, and creamy, it made you want to eat it.
  Both of them, Harvey and Ray, once again comrades in arms after all those years, had leaned over so far to take a look at Croker’s cathedral of Mammon that was going for a song, their heads were almost touching. Each was thinking of the figures and building his own castles in the air.
  
  
• 
  David DeValera

  Charlie Croker is one pig-headed cracker from the old-South. Charlie raises horses, fearlessly handles snakes, shoots quail, runs his own fleet of jets, is married to a younger, beautiful woman, and is in general a good ole boy -- even owns an honest ta gawd plantation where all the helpin' folk are black.
  
  Mr. Croker is also a man in prime need of a humbling experience. Charlie is a real estate developer and his most serious problems result from a wide-body ego coupled with backward planning: desire it, act on it--followed by--plan for it, pay for it.
  
  Charlie becomes overextended on a real estate deal for a development that is largely a monument to himself, even named it "The Croker Concourse." This leads to a "workout session" at Planners Bank, where Charlie is given a most unpleasant reception. Wolfe describes the scene in vintage style, casting a rheumy eye on corporate America and its ugly military efficiency and total bottom line orientation. It is at this point where you will realize that you have come to like Charlie Croker, that you are pulling for this humus head from south of the gnat line, that Croker, raw and crude as he is, contains a genuine spirit and optimism that has been squelched in the rest of us.
  
  Politics and money drive the entire story. Wolfe shows how saturated Americans are with these two Noble Truths. (Even Conrad-the-Stoic's actions, the character with the spiritual soul of this 787 page journey, were brought about by the frustrations of not being an economically viable member of society.) Wolfe's satire is as biting as a side ache, unfortunately, the truth running beneath the humor is a sobering one. This is the kind of book our grand kids will read and when they finish it, they will close the book and exclaim, "My god, were you people ever messed up!"
  
  I especially liked the chapters dealing with Atlanta's black mayor. He is like an inverted Oreo, posing publicly as white for the money constituents from the wealthy white neighborhoods, and posing privately as black for the less economically powerful, but more numerous black voters. The tribal art collection ebbs and flows through his office in accordance with the political tide.
  
  Wolfe brings the Mayor, Croker and Planners Bank together on an issue that threatens to explode the entire city in racial tension. Fareek Fanon, a black football star is accused of raping a white woman from one of Atlanta's most influential families. If Croker, (a former football great) speaks out on Fareek's behalf, maybe the mayor can help him with all his debts to Planners Bank? Maybe someone high up in Planners Bank will be owed a valuable gift in return for forgiving Crokers debt? And if the mayor quells the coming riots, maybe he can reclaim the straying voters and get reelected?
  
  Everyone is itching and planning for the scratch, but greed and political chess playing enter the equation, creating a centrifugal force that sucks some characters into the melee and spins others off into ruin.
  
  A Man in Full is ruthless and wicked writing from an author who portrays the face of American society with a magnifying glass held over the warts and moles.
  
• 
  aPriL does feral sometimes

  Tom Wolfe's 1998 novel 'A Man in Full' is very close to being an American homage to Charles Dickens in style. Wolfe himself describes his writing style as journalism-based fiction. I think this means the book's fictional characters and intertwined plots which spin around each other must be based on real life with the names changed to mask what were real people and events. The various settings - warehouses, prisons, City Hall, museums, mansions, banks, restricted membership clubs, poor and wealthy neighborhoods - definitely seem real!
  
  The book is a widescreen look at Atlanta, Georgia - the way politics and business interests carefully hookup and breakup. The discomfort of forced alliances between the remnants of White rich good ol' boys still living the antebellum life and the more modern Black politicians and White businessmen is satirically described. Everyone must still handle the rich good ol' boys gently because of their lingering influence on politics and journalists and other social spheres.
  
  The world of power in 1998 Atlanta is one fueled by money - and entirely controlled by men. Women are all spousal trophies, whether they are ex, current, or future (daughters). The one and only thing disturbing the usual and customary reliance on money to determine the pecking orders of powerful interests is the friction of Race interactions, ever present in America and especially the South during this era. In this book, a popular college football player who is Black is accused of raping a wealthy man's daughter during a party. Inman Armholster is the head of a chemicals conglomerate and very likely the richest man in Georgia. Elizabeth, his daughter claims Fareek Fanon, top athletic of Georgia Tech, raped her.
  
  But there's much more!
  
  Charlie Croker is at the center of what happens in the book. He is a good ol' boy, owner of a plantation, factories, warehouses, and a jet. He is a real estate mogul. Or, he was. He has borrowed too much money to finance the building of a financial center away from Atlanta. The finished office buildings and supporting structures did not fill up with bankers and other finance-related businesses as the economy slowed down when the center opened. Renters are not showing up. Charlie can't believe the lenders are threatening to take his plantation, paintings and other furnishings, his factories and his jet. Politicians and bankers used to stand up respectfully when he entered rooms. Now, they are openly despising his good ol' boy lifestyle and mannerisms along with tittering at his money problems.
  
  Various politicians, lawyers and bankers begin to circle Croker as the rumor of his bankruptcy begins to be known. The smell of financial blood in the water excites rather than dismays these fellows! One group, a mixture of Georgia Tech coaches, lawyers and Black politicians, hope to pressure Croker into supporting Fareek's claim of innocence. Croker is a well-known Southern cracker and friend of Armholster. If he does this, the bank will extend his loan. But it means putting his entire life under someone else's control and his friendships will be at risk.
  
  Another thread in the story does not seem remotely a part of the drama in Atlanta. Eventually it connects with the struggle between the 1 percenters of Atlanta. It might seem like a weird and improbable join, and it is, but having known some wealthy folk and their lifestyles, I know this happens. Conrad Hensley, a warehouse worker in Oakland and a married father of two, makes some terrible decisions. He is a poor man, and his poverty exacerbates his mistakes exponentially. He finds himself in prison.
  
  Wolfe writes of society, people and politics with the tip of his tongue slightly protruding rather than tucked into his cheek in controlled laughter. One can sense his slight shock that this stuff he is fictionalizing for us in his novels or revealing in his nonfiction books is true to real life behind the curtain of masculine power and politics. I no longer wonder at how journalists become cynical and yet still fascinated by human nature.
• 
  F.R.

  Firstly, one has to doff the cap to Tom Wolfe’s prose style. The writing throughout this long book remains at a consistently high level, and even chapters which I later considered superfluous were brilliantly written. Absolutely there were points where you could see his research poking through, segments where Wolfe proved he’d learnt something in such fine detail and wanted the reader to know that – but the fact that it was rendered so beautifully in English allowed me to accept these little lectures. He is an excellent stylist.
  
  So I have no problems with the writing in ‘A Man in Full’, but I do have reservations about it as a work of fiction.
  
  Wolfe’s adherence to a Victorian novel is admirable, the old idea of looking at life at every strata and weaving these different strands all together. But I think in this instance he hasn’t brought these elements together that well, and I am suspicious as to how much empathy he has – even with his journalist’s hat on – with some of the areas he tackles. This is a book about a real estate tycoon named Charlie Croker who is about to go bankrupt; it’s also about an alleged rape by a black athlete of the daughter of a white businessman; it’s about black politics in Georgia; it’s about a man on the breadline falling foul of the law; it’s about dumped first wives; it’s about a banker whose life has crashed and latterly it’s about how the works of the Stoics can be made to apply in the late stages of the 20th century. I know that these varying strands do ostensibly come together at the end, but I wasn’t convinced by that convergence or by the conclusions reached from it.
  
  Furthermore, it’s clear Wolfe is more interested in writing about some areas than others. The rape case for instance – which at one point looks to be the driver of the book – is left on the shelf for chapter after chapter as the author concentrates on things he clearly finds more interesting. As such we have a lot of pages devoted to – in this book primarily set in Georgia – life behind bars in California. Now I thought those chapters were really well done, but were they truly necessary? Are they a comfortable fit in this book? Probably not, but as Wolfe had already done the research then he might as well work them in.
  
  Another problem I had was this a very male book. Yes, there are female characters, but they are only ever defined by the men in their lives. Okay, that’s true of a number of books, but Wolfe does bring one female character to the fore and still only uses her for nothing more than commenting on the men around her. That character is Charlie Croker’s first wife Martha, who is the most rounded female character in the novel, but still doesn’t feel rounded at all. And as for his second wife, the least said the better. (Has anyone read ‘I Am Charlotte Simmons’? The mind boggles.)
  
  All that being said, I enjoyed this book, even if I did have to stifle the odd yelp of criticism. I think though, that in a hundred years time, it will be the non-fiction rather than the novels that Wolfe is remembered for.
• 
  Jerry

  Tom Wolfe can write. The Right Stuff and Bonfire of the Vanities are two great examples. There are many bright spots in "A Man In Full", for instance, Conrad (the protagonist) ends up in Santa Rita jail, and must struggle surviving in that hostile environment. I thought that was quite well done until fate intervened and conveniently got him out of a bad situation. But all in all, the plot is so convoluted, and the prose is so filled with extraneous minutia, that I struggled to get through it. This was my third try, having given up twice previously. Since it is one of my 2011 challenge books, I gave it another go, and finally finished it. The most disappointing thing is that this could have been so much better with some dedicated editing. Cut 200 pages and get to the point a lot quicker! This would probably be pretty good as a Readers Digest Condensed story. Can't recommend it otherwise.
• 
  Gaby

  I wanted to like this book because it's set in Atlanta & I like Tom Wolfe. Um, yep, so I wanted to like it. But weighing in at a gajillion pages, if I ever have to read 20 pages about each ancillary character's italian leather loafers or bowtie type or silk cravat knot's again, I may shoot myself in the face.
• 
  Dean Cummings

  In ��A Man in Full” Tom Wolfe introduces us to Charlie Croker, a divorced, unsuitably remarried, sixty year old millionaire property developer whose current circumstances are precarious, both professionally and personally. Despite the gravity of his situation, he’s still a larger than life presence, possessing an indomitable spirit, unwilling to capitulate despite the weariness of the crushing stress of his considerable woes.
  
  I must say, as I read Wolfe’s detailing of Croker, a swashbuckling entrepreneur, in decline, but still stubbornly fighting back, I couldn’t help seeing the image of the disgraced 1980’s automobile magnate John DeLorean as he spoke at the DeLorean Car Show in the summer of 2000. As I watched the much greyed DeLorean give a brief speech, I was amazed how, despite many years in the business “wilderness” he still carried himself with a sense of venerability, holding the small audience in the palm of his hand. DeLorean was talking about the future of the DeLorean car, a future that, from a rational standpoint, he could never be any part of. Yet as I watched him and listened to the cadence of his commanding speaking voice, I couldn’t help feeling that all of those 1980’s dreams of DeLorean greatness were once again possible. Reality was temporarily suspended by the force of the man’s self-assured, almost regal presence, combined with the expansiveness of his personality, it was almost as if his tattered reputation and advancing age were subordinate to the powerfully telegenic presence of the man himself.
  
  I has a similar sense as I read about Charlie Croker in the beginning of the book. Wolfe tells us how deep his troubles are, yet I believed, against all reasonableness, that this towering, awesome force of a man could make a comeback. That this was possible, maybe even inevitable for a man like Charlie Croker. This possibility, and exactly how it would play out, immediately drew me into “A Man in Full” never releasing me until the very end.
  
  There were other aspects to this novel that grabbed me, one was early in the story, and was associated with something the author said when he was interviewed by 60 Minutes: “Every age has a certain moral tone, and no matter how you try to lead your life, you are going to be affected by that moral tone. You don’t have any choice.”
  
  That quote was representative of the way in which Wolfe places scenes before us that seem to show the individual, a separate entity, yet at the same time inevitably connected to the mood and circumstances of the group surrounding them. But Wolfe take this even further as he portrays the group itself as subservient to the moral tone of the times. In “A Man in Full” his stage is the city of Atlanta in the 1990’s, one of his chapters focuses on a unique part of Atlanta’s 1990’s history called “Freaknik.”
  
  Prior to reading “A Man in Full” I was unaware of “Freaknik” as a memorable, colorful feature of Atlanta’s history in the 1980’s and 1990’s. “Freaknik” was an annual spring break gathering of students from historically black colleges and universities, generally held the third weekend in April, which occurred at the same time as Reading Day weekend for the students of Atlanta University Center. “Freaknik” began in 1983, then grew in size and scope in the 1990s’ to include parties, dancing, drinking, rap sessions and even basketball tournaments.
  
  I loved how Wolfe chose to give us a glimpse of “Freakink” from the street level perspective. It all happens during a traffic jam on Piedmont Street that suddenly turns into a spontaneous street party. The scene is told to us through the eyes of a character we would not generally associate with a raucous social gathering such as this, he’s a lawyer named Roger “Too White” Ahlstrom White II. White is stuck in the traffic jam along with the revelers, watching the impromptu street party unfold through the windshield of his Lexus. The central character of this particular scene is a young lady who happens to be seated in the car near where White’s Lexus.
  
  Here’s what White sees:
  
  “Out of the passenger-side window of a screaming-red Chevrolet Camaro just ahead of him, in the lane to his left, shot one leg of a pair of fiercely pre-faded blue jeans. A girl. He could tell it was a girl because of the little caramel-colored foot that protruded from the jeans, shod only in the merest of sandals. Then, much faster than it would take to tell it, out the window came her hip, her little bottom, her bare midriff, her tube top, her wide shoulders, her long wavy black hair with its heavenly auburn sheen. Youth! She hadn’t even bothered to open the door. She had come rolling out of the Camaro like a high jumper rolling over the bar at a track meet.
  
  As soon as both feet touched the pavement of Piedmont Avenue, she started dancing, thrusting her elbows out in front of her and thrashing them about, shaking those lovely little hips, those tube-topped breasts, those shoulders, that heavenly hair.”
  
  According to White’s account, the dance initiated by this one girl encouraged motorists all up and down the street to alight from their vehicles, then begin following her lead as they all begin dancing to dance the soundtrack of rap artist Doctor Rammer Doc Doc.
  
  “Ram yo’ booty! Ram yo’ booty.”
  
  White goes onto give us his account of an entire street gyrating in unison to the blasting rapper’s beat. The scene then shifts, revealing a starkly different group of people, standing high above Piedmont, the new southern aristocracy of Atlanta, looking down their noses on the partiers below:
  
  “From where he was he could see the white faces of the men and the shoulders of their tuxedos. He could see the white faces of the women…their white shoulders and the bodices of their dresses. They were not smiling. They were not happy. Bango! The Piedmont Driving Club! The Driving Club was the very sanctum, the very citadel of the White Atlanta Establishment. He got the picture immediately. These white swells had no doubt planned this big party for this Saturday night ages ago, never dreaming it would coincide with Freaknik. And now their worst nightmare had come true. They were marooned in the very middle of it! Black Freaknik!"
  
  The scene then shifts back to the street level perspective, the “Queen of the Rout”, the college aged girl, now dancing on top of the Camaro:
  
  “The Deb, this beautiful, exquisite young woman was…grinding her booty and projecting her breasts…she looked at them with a grin of concupiscent mockery and continued to grind her hips.”
  
  Then a scene transition happens, the aristocratic Driving Club members suddenly find themselves being observed by the partiers below:
  
  “When suddenly Circe, the Deb, the golden tan daughter of some Ideal Black Professional Couple of the 1990’s, stretched her right arm straight out, pointing upward – and grinned.
  Stunned, astonished, her besotted subjects on the pavement swiveled their heads in that direction too. Now they were all looking upward, obedient drones of Circe. They had all spotted the white people up on the terrace of the Driving Club peering down from the formal eminence of their tuxedos and cocktail dresses. All the boys and girls, the whole street full of them, began laughing and shouting:
  
  “Ram yo’ booty! Ram yo’ booty!”
  
  Wolfe then describes how the crowd then redirects the force of their rebellious energy in the direction of the elite Driving Club members above them. They begin a chant of good natured mockery.
  
  “You want to see Freaknik?” The partiers seem to be asking the Driving Club. “Then we’ll show it to you! We’ll give you a real eyeful. We’re loose! We’re down! You’re dead! You’re rickety!”
  
  Wolf then tells us that a new rap song came blaring from the Camaro, perfectly reflecting the mood of the partiers:
  
  “GONNA SOCK IT TO MY BABY! LIKE A ROCKET, DON’T MEAN MAYBE!”
  
  The entire scene unfolds over the course of a mere ten pages, but that was more than enough for me to appreciate the context of conflicting cultures, perspectives, values and circumstances of these two groups. This traffic jam party brought these two groups of people closer than ever, and by doing so, shone a bright light on the source of the tensions between them. This was my first Tom Wolfe novel, and once I read this section, I understood why he’s hailed as, not only a great storyteller, but also, in the words of a reviewer, “He understands the human animal like no one else.”
  
  As I continued to read, it slowly dawned on me that Wolfe was going to continue weaving powerful scenes that showcase the imbalance and inequality of life between the “haves” and “have nots” living within the boundaries of Atlanta. The book is 742 pages long, and wonderfully so to me as it seems as though no aspect of life is spared his storytelling scrutiny of the vast gulf existing between the powerful and the powerless, so many themes are visited from street lingo, dining choices, fashion, even the architectural differences between neighborhoods.
  
  By the end of this fantastic book, I felt as though I had a “360 view” of life in 1990’s Atlanta, and even more so, I won’t soon forget the wonderful way in which Wolfe shows us what a “man in full” really means.
  
• 
  guanaeps

  Without a doubt the best book I've ever read in my literary career. Tom Wolfe is the sharpest mother fucker you'll ever read. He brings so many different elements into his writing. He captures the human spirit so excruciatingly well its a revelation to see it written in words. One his best aspects is although he is very literate and descriptive, his story telling is buttery smooth. I found myself blasting through this book, not only because the story, with all its sub plots and twists and turns, was superb, but because his writing is just easy to understand; like Tom Wolfe himself is retelling the account to your face. In the novel, a character finds himself relating eerily well with a book he randomly comes into contact with, and it helps him, drives him, makes him become a better version of himself. he sees getting the book as fate. I see it the exact same way. Never heard of tom wolfe before, got this book for Christmas, very random. but i gave it the benefit of the doubt and now i feel like, for some reason i cant even begin to ponder, i was supposed to get this book...that i was supposed to read it...that this is my life path and now I cant wait to indulge more into the wonderful ecstasy that is Tom Wolfe. That a one single mind conceived of this novel is nothing short of extraordinary. I can't recommend this book enough.
• 
  Vagabond of Letters, DLitt

  9.5/10
  
  A man converted to stoicism in prison in Alameda County, California escapes during an earthquake which flattens the prison and proceeds to travel to Atlanta on the lam, where he in turn converts a bankrupt legendary real estate developer to stoicism. Said real estate developer is on the sidelines of a race riot in Atlanta (during the mayoral campaign) caused by a date rape accusation lodged against Georgia Tech's black All-American running back by the daughter of another legendary real estate developer. Stoicism in prison and in the boardroom, the timeless wisdom of Epictetus for all of us dispossessed slaves. Tom Wolfe does it again: I just wish he could have worked some Marcus Aurelius in.
  
  Recommended to anyone interested in philosophy, business, prison, or race. I don't know how Tom Wolfe gets this stuff by the censors.
• 
  Shyama Perera

  This is one of my all time favourites. I read it when it came out and still remember parts of it vividly - Charlie Croker's almost invisible women, the rape, the meat factory, the jail, Plato and Socrates, the machinations of racial politics, and the kingly pride of real estate moguls who literally shape our cities. I couldn't put this book down, and even though it slightly fell to pieces in the last fifty pages, it didn't matter when the previous 680 or so had kept me in thrall. It isn't as perfect a novel as The Bonfire of the Vanities, and you need to give up a few days of your life to read it - because once you start, you can't stop - but as with its predecessor, it beautifully captures the concerns, the perceptions, the foibles and the politics of the time.
• 
  Bronson

  I read this about 8 years ago and started listening to it again a few weeks ago while I was doing some home improvment projects. I love tom Wolfe - I think he is one of the best story tellers ever and he can really spin a totally believable tale. He creates so much suspense and anxiety in very real-life kinds of situations. This is the story of 4 main characters as they come to find out what potential lies within each of them. Its great, but it does have a lot of harsh language and some sexual content - mostly just with a horse breeding scene. He also gets to use the term solar-plexus in this book just like he does in all his others. Its my second favorite Wolfe book next to the Right Stuff.
• 
  Dan

  I came across a copy of this at our neighborhood book-sharing shelf, thinking I'd re-read it for ths first time in so many years. I'd absolutely loved it back when it was first published, and was curious about how it would play a good 25 years later. Happy to say that Wolfe's writing remains electrifying, and that the way he skillfully navigates the minefield of race, gender, power, and politics in late-20th-century America remains pretty impressive. In any case, I read it voraciously – some of these chapters are just about the best writing I've ever seen.
• 
  Brian

  This is a superb novel that I found very hard to put down. Quite a compliment for a 742-page book!
• 
  Chris

  This is a long book at 740 pages. The story builds rather well but the ending does a poor job of wrapping up the story lines. I was very disappointed. Its almost as if Wolfe lost interest in the book and just briefly summed everything up and not very inventively.
  
  I mainly read this book to get a feel for Wolfe writing style. Tom Wolfe is nothing if not good at character development. The level of detail he provides really allows you to see the scene in your mind and know the characters in the book.
  
  It seems that most of Wolfe's books surround a period of time such as Atlanta in the early 90's in this case. The story tries to portray the politics, mood, and traditions of that period. Almost as if the entire point of the book is to paint that picture in the readers mind rather than telling an effective story.