The Right Stuff
by Tom Wolfe
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Book Summary Information
Author: Tom WolfeEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-03-04
ISBN: 0312427565
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Picador
Book Reviews of The Right Stuff
Book Review: An evocative trip to a vanished era
Summary: 5 Stars
When I was growing up, I did not want to me an astronaut. I wanted to be a ballerina. Now, with the state of both the space program and the arts, it appears that there will be neither astronauts nor ballerinas in America in the future. So in the future, children will have to dream about the past.
Tom Wolfe's THE RIGHT STUFF presents the sheer power and drive of the story. This is, after all, the book that turned Chuck Yeager from someone known primarily by airplane lovers to a bona fide Great American. I remember too how it was the movie version of this book that was anticipated to launch the John Glenn presidential campaign, the progress of which had started, it was thought, on the day he volunteered for astronaut training.
I am old enough to remember most of the events he describes, and, at least in my mind, it has captured the time and place. There are no footnotes, but obviously a lot of interviews went into this book. The big picture is accurate, even if he does get aircraft designations wrong (he confuses the Grumman F7F Tigercat and the Grumman F11F Tiger, and that F4H-1s became F-4Bs in 1962). He's got other details wrong too. But that's small stuff.
There are remarkable descriptions that have great applicability as craft examples. This includes the description of a deck landing in chapter 2, or of the testffield at Muroc in chapter 3. Chapter 1 provides an example of how to introduce terms (pushing the envelope), the effective use of repetition (the bridge coats at the funerals), Chapter 1 also shows the invocation of sensory details, with the smells of an airplane that has crashed in a swamp, and a description of the swamp itself. These descriptions arise segued not from a description of the airplane that has crashed or the pilot that has been killed, but of the feelings of the spouse of a surviving pilot at the funeral of the guy who finished off in the swamp. Such emotions are certainly a powerful opening to the book, and starting off with the wife, not with the pilot or the airplane, a non-obvious narrative approach, was used to powerful advantage.
Chapter 11 includes a remarkable an exciting scene, with Gus Grissom in the water after his capsule had landed and a series of failures leads to the capsule sinking and him almost being drowned, He runs through the scene effectively twice, once from the point of view of the literally more distant (and detached) rescue helicopter pilots and one from that of the closely involved, potentially drowning Grissom which reproduced what was going on inside his head. Now, Grisson may have talked aboiut this is an interview before his tragic death in the Apollo capsule fire, or this may all be the author's surmise. The reader does not know. But it is done effectively. As is the transition to the disappointment in the lack of post-launch recognition that followed the Grissom mishap.
When Chuck Yeager stalls and spins the NF-104 in chapter 15, it was a spectacular scene. ).
Summary of The Right Stuff
From "America?s nerviest journalist" (Newsweek)--a breath-taking epic, a magnificent adventure story, and an investigation into the true heroism and courage of the first Americans to conquer space. "Tom Wolfe at his very best" (The New York Times Book Review)
Tom Wolfe began The Right Stuff at a time when it was unfashionable to contemplate American heroism. Nixon had left the White House in disgrace, the nation was reeling from the catastrophe of Vietnam, and in 1979--the year the book appeared--Americans were being held hostage by Iranian militants. Yet it was exactly the anachronistic courage of his subjects that captivated Wolfe. In his foreword, he notes that as late as 1970, almost one in four career Navy pilots died in accidents. "The Right Stuff," he explains, "became a story of why men were willing--willing?--delighted!--to take on such odds in this, an era literary people had long since characterized as the age of the anti-hero."
Wolfe's roots in New Journalism were intertwined with the nonfiction novel that Truman Capote had pioneered with In Cold Blood. As Capote did, Wolfe tells his story from a limited omniscient perspective, dropping into the lives of his "characters" as each in turn becomes a major player in the space program. After an opening chapter on the terror of being a test pilot's wife, the story cuts back to the late 1940s, when Americans were first attempting to break the sound barrier. Test pilots, we discover, are people who live fast lives with dangerous machines, not all of them airborne. Chuck Yeager was certainly among the fastest, and his determination to push through Mach 1--a feat that some had predicted would cause the destruction of any aircraft--makes him the book's guiding spirit.
Yet soon the focus shifts to the seven initial astronauts. Wolfe traces Alan Shepard's suborbital flight and Gus Grissom's embarrassing panic on the high seas (making the controversial claim that Grissom flooded his Liberty capsule by blowing the escape hatch too soon). The author also produces an admiring portrait of John Glenn's apple-pie heroism and selfless dedication. By the time Wolfe concludes with a return to Yeager and his late-career exploits, the narrative's epic proportions and literary merits are secure. Certainly The Right Stuff is the best, the funniest, and the most vivid book ever written about America's manned space program. --Patrick O'Kelley
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