Book Review: Tom Wolfe: A Critical Companion, by Brian Abel Ragen (2002)

The cover of Tom Wolfe: A Critical Companion, by Brian Abel Ragen, 2002. (Photographed on the Tom Wolfe book shelf by Mark C. Taylor.)

Tom Wolfe: A Critical Companion, by Brian Abel Ragen, published in 2002, is part of the “Critical Companions to Popular Contemporary Authors” series, published by Greenwood Press. It’s an insightful look at Wolfe’s writing, and Ragen does a nice job of summarizing Wolfe’s importance to contemporary American writing. 

While the text on the inside of the book is accurate, there are three errors on the back cover. The first refers to Wolfe’s “short stories in the 1960’s.” No, those were non-fiction articles written for newspapers and magazines. The cover goes on to talk about his “non-fiction novel,” The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. This was not a term that Wolfe used for that book; rather it was Truman Capote’s term for In Cold Blood. The back cover also informs us that A Man in Full was published in 1999. Nope, it was 1998. Someone over at Greenwood Press needed to do a better copy editing job.

The structure of the series is geared more towards fiction writers, as the sections for each book are divided into headings like “structure and point of view,” “plot,” “character development,” “literary devices,” and “major themes.” (The headings vary slightly for each book.) Sometimes the headings can feel more like a paint-by-numbers exercise rather than an organic examination of each book. And the headings would make more sense for a writer like Philip Roth or John Updike or Joyce Carol Oates, who’ve written a million novels, so you could quickly see, “Oh yeah, what’s Roger’s Version about?” That being said, the headings do give Ragen a chance to examine how Wolfe uses literary techniques like point of view in non-fiction, which was one of the reasons why the New Journalism movement was so controversial. 

Unfortunately, Ragen doesn’t cover Wolfe’s two books about art and architecture, The Painted Word and From Bauhaus to Our House in depth. That’s a shame, because the books are fascinating reading, and they fit into Wolfe’s theme of criticizing orthodoxies in many different areas of modern life. The book feels a little incomplete because of that. 

The plots of The Bonfire of the Vanities and A Man in Full are examined in ultra-fine detail, so if you ever need to refresh your memory on anything from those two novels, you can refer back to Tom Wolfe: A Critical Companion rather than trying to thumb through the 600-plus pages of the novels. 

Ragen’s chapter about Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers is superb, and his deep dive into Radical Chic is very well done. It’s the treatment that one of Wolfe’s most famous essays deserves. The chapter on The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is also excellent. 

The opening section on Wolfe’s life is good, but doesn’t bring us any major revelations. Fun fact: Tom Wolfe had a tryout with the New York Giants baseball team in 1952. Can you imagine that? I mean, can you see it? Young TW, out there on the pitcher’s mound, resplendent in his home whites, looking like a million bucks, and he leans in and looks down at the catcher over that aquiline nose of his and gets the sign. And he goes into his windup, and man, this cat’s got style! His pitching motion doesn’t look like anything the batter has ever seen before, and he’s starting to quake with fear, can this kid even put the ball over the plate? Or is he gonna bean me in the head? Suddenly, whhhoooooosh! With a flourish he releases the ball:::::::::::::and the batter swings, thinking it’s a straight fastball, but suddenly, the last five feet before the plate the ball bucks, jumps, twists and dives ten inches straight down. “Steeeeeriiiikkkkke threeeeeee!” the old arteriosclerotic umpire bellows. “The Richmond Rifle” strikes again! And the crowd lets out a huge, throaty RRRRROOOOOOAAAAARRRRR! The stands in the Polo Grounds are starting to shake as Wolfe strides off the mound back into the dugout. The rest of the players are packed shank to flank on the bench. The manager ambles over to him, spits a wad of chewing tobacco onto the field, pats him on the shoulder and says, “Nice work, young man. You got another inning in ya?” Wolfe smiles, this shy little smile, like he’s got a secret that he hasn’t let anyone else in on yet, and he says, “Why, I reckon I do, skip.” 

Tom Wolfe: A Critical Companion is a worthy addition to the small number of books chronicling this superb writer.