I recently acquired a copy of this book by Tom Wolfe. I’ve never read it before, nor have I seen the film, however, I’ve been told it’s fantastic. A classic. “The best bestselling fiction debut of the decade.” Yadda yadda yadda, everyone says it’s not to be missed.
I am having a REAL REAL hard time getting through the first few pages of this book! Perhaps it’s Wolfe’s style of writing, maybe I’m just not spending enough time thinking about the story - I don’t know. I am totally uninterested in everyone - and their situations. It isn’t grabbing me at ALL. I am seriously having trouble reading this!
Again, is it me? I feel bad - I WANT to like it. I WANT to enjoy reading it. I’ve put it down four times this weekend - I just couldn’t do it.
Help. Can someone tell me what it is I might be missing? I feel like such a loser! I can’t be the only person in the world who doesn’t much like it, or can I?
Skip ahead to the chapter “Death, New York Style*” to where Peter (IIRC) is entering the restaurant to interview the guy who owns the Middle Eastern airline. Anything that happens in the restaurant has no major impact (spoiler-wise) on what’s going on in the rest of the story - it’s more a vignette than anything.
If you don’t like that chapter, you probably won’t care for the book.
*I think. It’s been a while since I read it, but I’m pretty sure that’s the name of the chapter. It’s funny as all hell, though.
The chapter, to me, perfectly encapsulates everything that Wolfe was trying to do in the entire novel - skewer everybody with “pretentions” about their place in society merely because of where they lived/worked.
I just read it for my book club - I’m not sure if I would have finished it had I not needed to discuss it the next morning (nothing moves reading like a deadline).
One of the things I found very off-putting was that the characters were not “every mans.” Wolfe kept telling me over and over and over again that they were different than me, and they were not like me, and that they were who they were, and their point of view was theirs and not mine … and blah blah blah - that by page 30 I thought “fine. I get it. I can’t relate to them. I’m going to stop trying, happy now?”
So, I had a total lack of sympathy toward or empathy with any of the characters, just a mild curiosity to see what happened to them. That was enough to get through it (that and the possibility of public humiliation). If you lack the curiosity, put it down, it was good, but not that good.
You said you were having trouble getting through the “first few pages” of the book; I’m not sure how many that means to you, but I’d say try to read into it at least a little before giving it up completely. I read it quite a few years ago; I wasn’t blown away, and some of it was off-putting, but on the whole I liked it and thought it was worthwhile. Don’t persist if you really hate it, but at least give it a fair shot.
For god sake stay away from the movie. I actually kind of liked the book but the movie has very little to do with it. And is really, surprisingly bad. Really bad.
The book is (I think) fairly ok. I guess the only help I can offer is: don’t think of it as Great Literature, yadda yadda yadda, just think of it as a Good Read and leave it at that. It’s kind of fun. In a harrowing sort of way. I guess particually because there are no character you can really care about.
Ya gotta understand about Wolfe: He’s a politically conservative literary Catholic. Like, he is, or aspires to be, his generation’s Evelyn Waugh (as if that were something to be proud of). IOW, he really believes in Original Sin (and, at the same time, the possibility of personal redemption), and a lot of his writing is motivated by that set of moral/spiritual sensibilities. (And if you think that comes across in his fiction, just try his “journalism” – see the highly intellectually dishonest Hooking Up – bearing in mind this thread about his article on the so-called “IQ Cap.”) Which doesn’t mean it’s not worth reading, because he’s brilliant in many ways, but he does see the “vanities” of all forms of worldliness and sensuality and excess – not only the upper-crust conspicuous consumption of Sherman McCoy, but also the ostentatious, self-aggrandizing social-justice obsessions of the Al Sharpton character (forget his name), and the literary pretensions of the drunken, hedonistic journalist Peter Fallow – I remember reading once that in that particular novel Wolfe made all his characters “equally repellent.” (Which is not quite fair – McCoy, for all his hypocrisy and adultery, is significantly less repellent than all the rest.) Of course, having taken the morally correct stand on it, he can gloat and leer at all that excess as much as he likes, to a degree that might have embarrassed Raymond Chandler.
I discovered Tom Wolfe when I read The Right Stuff. It remains one of the books on my All Time Favorites list, both for the subject (I’m a child of the space-age - I was 6 when Apollo 11 landed), and because I loved Wolfe’s prose. Unfortunately, nothing of his I’ve read since then comes close, in subject or style. I slogged through all of Bonfire because I kept thinking, “Surely it’s going to get better!” It never did. All the characters were unlikeable (as BrainGlutton said, McCoy was less so, but not by a lot), the plot was contrived and the prose was, well, prosaic (albeit with a brilliant paragraph here and there). IMHO, if you don’t like it, don’t bother. Life is too short.
I’ve enjoyed Wolfe’s fiction and non-fiction, but I’ll second JohnT’s suggestion that you pick a section and try it… and don’t feel bad if he’s not your style. If you can’t get into his fiction (BotV, A Man in Full, or I am Charlotte Simmons) give his non-fiction a try: The Right Stuff is rightly famous, and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test makes a nice primer before tackling most of the fiction written by or about its protagonists. But here is your warning: do not go see this man read from his own work in public. He is an insufferable ass; he is boring; he is full of himself. He wears a white linen suit, picks thoroughly self-centered topics, and holds forth on them in a droning voice that priests and preachers would envy for its soporific intensity.
It’s been years since I read, but my strong recollection is that it is very patchy. Some parts of it are superb (eg the styrofoam peanuts chapter). Other parts read like a really early draft.
Thanks everyone. I’m going to try again tonight (last night Hell’s Kitchen was on. I don’t do anything while Hell’s Kitchen is on) trying JohnT’s suggestion.
Rodgers01, I got through maybe 25-30 pages. I couldn’t stop rolling my eyes at that point.
Thanks, everyone, I’ll give it one more shot. If I decide I can’t take anymore, I’ll send it to the first doper who wants it.
