A Man in Full

This book is going to upset some people. Wolfe's latest novel is partially a commentary on our times (a la Bonfire of the Vanities), but more so an attempt to discover the meaning of manhood in this post-modern, "liberated" age. Accessible to a wide range of readers, with strongly defined characters, "A Man in Full" provides a searing look at modern America, its values, morals, and beliefs. Despite the book's immense size, it is never boring, and is full of dry wit and clever, often angry prose.The story revolves principally around the changing concept of manhood, and the forces that have altered it for both the better and worse. What does it mean to be a man in this day and age? For some it is the heavy machismo of sexual conquest; others it is the power of business and money; for others, it is honor and family. The book's main protagonists struggle constantly with their self-images. For Charlie Croker, the novel's principal character, it is the uprooting of his world after a full-fledged financial disaster robs him of his raison d'etre--what he perceives as the root of his existence--money and power. Much of the plot revolves around him, yet there is a sense that he is merely a representative character--symbolizing what is wrong with American manhood. There are few, if any, redemptive qualities within him. Redemption--in both the social and spiritual sense--is left to another character, Conrad Hensley. The novel features other characters, as well, who struggle against defining themselves in terms of race and class and sexuality, while others use those same standards to give meaning to their lives. At the heart of the book (although he is not the principal character, he is, ultimately, the book's hero) we have Conrad Hensley, whose own world has been changed by his refusal to plead guilty to a crime he did not commit. In Hensley we have a fine example of a modern man's quest to find himself, his manhood, values, and faith. Raised by hippie-ish parents to deride all "bourgeois values" like honor, success, respect, and family, he finds himself seeking those very things to fill the hole in his being. He takes dreadful, dead-end jobs to support his own family; he remains true to his wife, and he works hard to be a good husband and father. But for the sake of honor he refuses to plead guilty to aggravated assault in exchange for probation, and is sentenced to two years in jail. While in prison he begins to ask questions about his existence, searching for a faith he has never known. He errantly receives a book on Stoicism, and this seemingly innocuous event changes him forever. He begins to see a more complete version of himself, not as a Stoic--which, as Wolfe seems to say, is the type of thinking that has helped wreck our society--but in a way, as the man he's always been--loyal, honorable, and trustworthy. In Stoicism he finds stability, but also sees in its values the kind of selfishness and dis-attachment that has helped undermine the essence

Though I haven't had time to read all 805 previous reviews, my brief survey of them alerted me to the surprising fact that most readers took Charlie Croker, the big Atlanta businessman, to be the protagonist of this book. And if you think that, then no wonder if you're not satisfied with the story! Perhaps, in some barebones technical literary sense, Charlie Croker is the main character of the book. He is introduced on the first page; he gets more column inches, or whatever the equivalent is in book format; he is rich, powerful, important, and a large part of the storyline revolves around the changes in his fortune and the way he copes with them, or fails to. But if you let those things fool you into thinking that A Man in Full is primarily "about" Charlie Croker, then you have not only missed the whole point of the story, but made yourself an example of the very commentary Wolfe is trying to drive home.The true protagonist - or I should better say, the hero (and most certainly the referent of the title) - of this book is Conrad Hensley, the underdog family man who works in one of Croker's frozen food warehouses, undergoes a long series of unlikely adventures, and accidentally discovers the ancient Stoic religion, which becomes his salvation. The whole point of Stoicism is that it doesn't matter who you are socially, what you have, or what people think of you. All that really matters is what you alone can control: your own emotional/mental/spiritual state. Happiness lies in not letting yourself be controlled by externals. Let go of your attachments to them - accept that they are beyond your control - and nothing can touch you. This is what it means to be a true man, and in the book it is Conrad, not Croker, who achieves this ideal. Croker and the whole Atlanta scene are just there for contrast (false power and glory vs. Conrad's true greatness), to provide an arena for Wolfe to make some of his secondary points about the failings of our society, and as an endpoint for the karma (for lack of a better word) which Conrad achieves by taking his spiritual fate into his own hands under the guidance of Epictetus and Zeus.Towards the end of the book, Wolfe evens points this out, to make sure you can't miss it. Two of the other characters are reading a newspaper story about Croker's equanimity in the face of his creditors, under Conrad's guidance, invoking the protection of Zeus. Conrad, his home health aide, is briefly mentioned in the story. The characters shake their heads at how an impressionable young man could be taken in by Croker's crazy new beliefs; they're unable to imagine that the humble nobody, rather than the mover and shaker, could be the instigator of anything that creative and unusual. If you are criticizing A Man in Full because it's not a very good story about Charlie Croker, et al., you are making the same mistake - even after Wolfe drew it out for you like that at the end of the book! Perhaps a small part of this misundersta

I'm sure that by now everyone is aware of the basic story of A Man in Full, Tom Wolfe's eleven-years-in-the-making, heart-surgery and-depression-interrupted, follow up to his great novel of the 80's, Bonfire of the Vanities. Charlie Croker is a 60 year old, good old boy, developer in Atlanta. A former star Georgia Tech halfback, his empire includes a game ranch, a frozen foods business and a white elephant of an office building that is bleeding him dry. Judging his success purely by the accouterments, he appears to be doing okay, with a hottie trophy wife, a Gulf Stream 5, palatial houses, etc. But his bankers smell blood in the water, one of them (Raymond Peepgass) has even secretly put together a syndicate to take over the office building at cut rate, and Charlie has to lay off some workers at the food business, including young Conrad Hensley, just to free up cash and buy some time. Meanwhile, Georgia Tech's new star halfback, Fareek Fanon, is being accused of raping the daughter of one of Charlie's wealthy society cronies. Up and coming black attorney Roger White II (Roger Too White) has been called in to handle the defense and he offers Charlie a deal: speak out in support of Fareek at a press conference orchestrated by the mayor, and they'll get the bank to back off. As Charlie wrestles with this decision, Conrad works his way across the country, converting to Stoicism in the process. Their paths all meet when Conrad is assigned to Charlie as a physical therapist after knee surgery and shares the tenets of Stoicism with him. With the press conference looming Charlie must decide whether to go along with Roger's plan, by praising Fareek, and save his empire and position in society or be true to himself, at the risk of losing everything and possibly causing race riots in Atlanta, and tell the truth, that Fareek, like many athletes, is shallow, self-centered, pampered and arrogant. Of course, interspersed with this basic narrative, Wolfe provides the myriad details, learned expositions, social observations and zeitgeist probings for which he is justly famous. These elements of the novel, if not quite up to the level of his best work (Radical Chic, Bauhaus to Our House, The Right Stuff and Bonfire), are still very funny, extremely insightful and wildly ambitious. He really just blows the doors off of most other novelists, simply by being willing to attempt such a massive portrait of America. If you just take that set up, it looks like this is merely an updating of Bonfire--rich guy's world collapsing, racial tension, etc.. But the real risk taking, the nearly masochistic reach that Wolfe makes here, is in his portrayal of Conrad Hensley. For over thirty years, Wolfe has been a master of the social satire. He has basically made a career out of pricking the gonfalon bubbles of America's most ostentatious and self-important cultural elites. But once in a great while one of his subjects has managed to pierce the ironic veil and make hi

I was prompted to write my own review after reading the others on this page, because - to my amazement - none of these readers appear to have understood what the book really is about. Oh, you could read it as an exploration of racial, class, gender and other social issues if that's how your mind works, but you'd be missing the wood for the trees if you did. This book is really about what it means to be a man in our constrained, technologized, over-regulated fin-de-siècle world. I suspect the author agrees with me; that's why he called his book A Man In Full.The title is also a boast, and Wolfe makes good on it; his protagonist, Charlie Croker, is given to us in full, from the sweat-saddlebags under his armpits to the testosterone-clogged workings of his mind. This is characterization of the finest order; professional reviewers have compared Wolfe's abilities in this regard with those of Charles Dickens, which may be paying Dickens something of a compliment. The other characters in the book, especially the men, are almost as richly presented.This is one of the finest novels I have read by a contemporary author. I recommend it highly to anyone who likes the kind of novel I enjoy. My favourite writers, if it helps, are Martin Amis, William Boyd, Conrad, Isak Dinesen, Nabokov and Tolstoy.

This was one of the most important, engrossing books I have ever read. Tom Wolfe definitely has his finger on the pulse of society with his biting wit and his knowledge of the inner working of big city politics. He cleverly shows that he has a knowledge of all sides of life and isn't afraid to share his observations. Three totally different characters come together to affect each other. An excellent read for the Tom Wolfe fan.