Hooking Up

by TomWolfe (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2000

  $4.32

  By the year 2000 the term working class had fallen into disuse in the United States, and proletariat was so obsolete it was known only to a few bitter Marxist academics with wire hair sprouting out of their ears. The average electrician, air-conditioning mechanic or burglar-alarm repairman lived a life that would have made the Sun King blink... So begins 'Hooking Up', the first of the brilliant pieces in Tom Wolfe's new collection. Wolfe ranges from coast to coast chronicling everything from the sexual mores of teenagers to fundamental changes in the way human beings now regard themselves, thanks to the hot new fields of genetics and neuroscience. Hooking Up also includes Ambush at Fort Bragg, Wolfe's novella about 'sting TV', and 'U.R. Here', a story about a New York artist who triumphs precisely because of his total lack of talent. Funny, often savagely so, hard-hitting, wise, Wolfe remains a unique chronicler of America, and its future in a new age.

• Used

  Paperback
  2001

  $5.17

  Hooking Up ranges all over the modern world; in it Tom Wolfe updates us on the sexual manners and mores of teenagers (he is not adverse to doing a survey of teenage address books to find out exactly how many of them don't know the names of the boy/girl they've just hooked up with). From this he moves effortlessly to an investigation of the fundamental ways in which our lives and self-perceptions have changed, living as we do in a modern world of genetic engineering and neuroscience. There are pieces on sting T.V. as well as forecasts of radical changes sweeping the world of the arts. Hooking Up closes with the legendary, never-before-reprinted pieces about The New Yorker and its famously reclusive editor William Shawn, pieces which early on helped win Wolfe his matchless reputation for reportorial bravura and spot-on insight. A glorious, questioning, memorable book, Hooking Up shows Tom Wolfe at the very top of his form.