As to just what this ineffable quality was. . .well,
it obviously involved bravery. But it was not
bravery in the simple sense of being willing to
risk your life. . .any fool could do that. . . . No, the
idea. . .seemed to be that a man should have the
ability to go up in a hurtling piece of machinery and
put his hide on the line and then have the moxie,
the reflexes, the experience, the coolness, to pull it
back in the last yawning moment--and then to go
up again the next day, and the next day, and every
next day. . . . There was a seemingly infinite series
of tests. . .a dizzy progression of steps and
ledges. . .a pyramid extraordinarily high and steep;
and the idea was to prove at every foot of the
way up that pyramid that you were one of the elected
and anointed ones who had the right stuff and
could move higher and higher and even--ultimately,
God willing, one day--that you might be able to
join that special few at the very top, that elite
who had the capacity to bring tears to men's eyes, the
very Brotherhood of the Right Stuff itself.
-Tom
Wolfe, The Right Stuff
I don't know whether Tom Wolfe invented New Journalism or merely noticed that it was aborning, even he would probably credit Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, but he's certainly one of the greatest practitioners and The Right Stuff one of his greatest achievements. The essence of this "new" writing style was that non-fiction writers would write with a distinct authorial voice and would utilize the techniques of the novel. Most importantly, rather than having the story exist solely to convey facts, the facts were to serve the story. This allowed the writer some license to play with reality a little, as long as the story remained "true" and it allowed the writer to aim for telling big truths, those which would frequently lie beyond the perspective of a conventional story.
All of these innovations are brilliantly on display here. Every paragraph of the book reeks of Tom Wolfe, from the capitalization of certain concepts (it not just the right stuff, it's The Right Stuff) to the snarky jabs at myriad puffed up targets. By using the structure of a novel, he gives the story a conceptual coherence that straight reportage might not have offered--thus, he starts with Yeager and the first supersonic jets, then presents the story of the Mercury program, then returns to Yeager and the end of the effort to build jets that would actually have traveled into space. All of this seems uniquely suited to satire or parody or simply viscious attack, indeed, Wolfe has used the stylistic conventions of New Journalism for just these purposes in books like "Radical Chic" and "Bauhaus to Our House" to brilliant effect. But an interesting thing happens in The Right Stuff. Even though we hear that snide voice trying to speak out periodically, Wolfe is so smitten by the jet pilots and astronauts and their wives that he writes about, that these devices are turned on their collective head and they become the accouterments of a kind of conscious, but unabashed, myth making.
In the end, the book becomes a sort of American Ring of the Nibelungen or Iliad. I remember when Philip Kaufman's movie version came out, people were a little disconcerted by the stylized story-telling, but it seemed to me that he had handled the material exactly right, like the libretto for a Grand Opera. As a newish country and a fairly secular one, we don't have many myths or fables (with the notable exception of the Western), but what Tom Wolfe serves up here, is a quintessential American epic, complete with archetypes and leitmotifs and the lot. By looking back at the "real" events through the lens of his book, we can actually penetrate to truths about our culture and our national character that would not have been apparent in a straightforward history of the Space Program.
This is a great book and Wolfe is one of our greatest writers.
(Reviewed:)
Grade: (A+)
