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PAR.TISAN REVIEW
In
A Man in Full,
Wolfe has moved from the New York of
Th.e Bonfire
of th.e Vanities
to Atlanta (the New York of the South?). The man in full
is Charlie Croker, a former sixty-minute Al l-American running back for
Georgia Tech and a real-estate developer extraordinaire, married for a
second time to an an All-American beauty less than half his age. In phys–
ical aspect, possession, social presence, and self-regard, he is an outsized
character of epic dimensions. "He loved the way his mighty chest rose
and fell beneath his khaki shirt and imagined that everyone in the hunt–
ing party noticed how powerfully built he was." A reckless investor in the
high-flying nineties, the eponymous creator of a grand concourse that
ultimately bankrupts him, Cap'n Charlie (as he is known to his retainers)
is perfectly placed for a fall from a great height. The supporting cast of
characters include an All-American black football athlete, Fareek Fanon,
accused of raping a daughter of the whi te establishment of Atlanta; an
upwardly mobile black lawyer, satirically named Roger Too Whi te; the
savvy black mayor of Atlanta; a laid-off employee of a Croker company
who finds himself in jail as a result of a bizarre set of circumstances; and
a technogeek and his technospeak learned in business school.
The several plots which these and other characters inhabit converge
and determine Croker's fate. Wolfe knows where the action is: the board
rooms of corporations and banks, the workplace, the college playing
fields, the large mansions of the super-rich, the city hall, the courtroom,
the prison. His themes are acquisitiveness, careerism, possession and dis–
possession, social climbing and social descending, and race relations. He is
a novelist of the manners and codes of the wealthy, the aspiring profes–
sional (both black and white), the black underclass, the Asian immigrant,
the hardened and not-so-hardened criminal.
A Man in Full
has something
for everyone.
His notation of a scene is nothing if not comprehensive and thorough,
the documentarist at work. On entering a room Wolfe provides an exact
description of it. A character appears and we are guaranteed a detailed
account of his appearance.
The room was not especially large, but the stylishness of it struck
Peepgass right away. Walls of darkest aubergine...set off four magnif–
icent old-fashioned triple-hung windows that ran floor to ceiling,
framed by spanking white louvered shutters on the sides and ornate
white Victorian wood work in the form of an ornate cornice at the
top of an ornate eighteen-inch-high skirting at the bottom...Harvey
Wyndham stood up. Peepgass could notice the changes immediately.
His once-thick brown hair was no longer that thick or all that brown.
