The Right Stuff

Tom Wolfe began The Right Stuff at a time when it was unfashionable to contemplate American heroism. Nixon had left the White House in disgrace, the nation was reeling from the catastrophe of Vietnam, and in 1979--the year the book appeared--Americans were being held hostage by Iranian militants. Yet it was exactly the anachronistic courage of his subjects that captivated Wolfe. In his foreword, he notes that as late as 1970, almost one in four career Navy pilots died in accidents. "The Right Stuff," he explains, "became a story of why men were willing--willing?--delighted!--to take on such odds in this, an era literary people had long since characterized as the age of the anti-hero."

Wolfe's roots in New Journalism were intertwined with the nonfiction novel that Truman Capote had pioneered with In Cold Blood. As Capote did, Wolfe tells his story from a limited omniscient perspective, dropping into the lives of his "characters" as each in turn becomes a major player in the space program. After an opening chapter on the terror of being a test pilot's wife, the story cuts back to the late 1940s, when Americans were first attempting to break the sound barrier. Test pilots, we discover, are people who live fast lives with dangerous machines, not all of them airborne.

Wolfe traces Alan Shepard's suborbital flight and Gus Grissom's embarrassing panic on the high seas (making the controversial claim that Grissom flooded his Liberty capsule by blowing the escape hatch too soon). The author also produces an admiring portrait of John Glenn's apple-pie heroism and selfless dedication. By the time Wolfe concludes with a return to Yeager and his late-career exploits, the narrative's epic proportions and literary merits are secure. Certainly The Right Stuff is the best, the funniest, and the most vivid book ever written about America's manned space program. --Patrick O'Kelley

View other editions of The Right Stuff.
View books by Tom Wolfe.

a masterpiece - Rated
I just re-read this book, having recommended it to a friend, and was once again swept up in its remarkable story. Wolfe takes you back to the start of the space race, and shows how the first American astronauts were perceived as single combat heroes of the Cold War. The tale is told in a unique style, somewhere between novel and non-fiction, and Wolfe's distinctive phrases continue to rattle around in my head some twenty years after I first read the book. So-and-so "screwed the pooch", for example, or "it can blow at any seam", or "His Majesty the Baby of thirty years ago". Momeorable stuff.

True heroism - Rated
The Right Stuff: '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 gap - and then go up again the next day, and the next day, and every next day ... '

This is one of the most unusual and best non-fiction books I have ever read. The film version of this book is also ground breaking. I love this book.

One thought expressed in the book, and the film, is when someone says the astronauts are only doing what a monkey can do (because eveything is automated) but as Yeager points out: A monkey does not know he is sitting on a rocket that could explode at any moment, unlike the astronaut.

In an age we have footballers portrayed as heroes simply for kicking a ball or advertising perfume, and soldiers wanting to sue for stress, it is refreshing to read about true heroes in an age when celebrity actually meant something.

The most wonderful stuff - Rated
Tom Wolfe is an outstanding writer, and this book shows him at his best. Wolfe recounts the careers of the first US astronauts, from their early hell-raising lives as test pilots to the first space flights and beyond, in exquisite, entertaining prose. His descriptions, whether of a crashed pilot "burned beyond recognition", or the minute-by-minute experience of the first astronauts in the Mercury programme, are mesmerising. Perhaps his greatest achievement is to describe the astronauts (eg the Peugeot-driving John Glenn) both as heroic, larger-than-life figures and as real, believable human beings.

Summary: an extraordinary book.

The return of the hero - Rated
When I was at university (a couple of years ago) I had a few 'truths' drummed into me. All in a subtle, needling were-not-telling-you-what-to-think-but-this-is-what-you-have-to-think type of way. First, genius doesn't exist. Second, there are no absolute 'truths' (hence the stupid speechmarks that crop up around every other word these days). Third, the Hero was dead.
I was taught that the Hero (as a concept/character type/role model) didn't apply to us these days. It was a macho construction, or something.
The Right Stuff brought back the notion of heroism - that fantastic, boy's own, Indiana Jones, Spiderman, stick the poster on your wall type of heroism that takes you back to your childhood.
And why not? Chuck Yeager, Alan Shepheard, John Glenn. The things these men went through to break the sound-barrier, to get man into space were astounding. They risked their lives every time they got into their aircraft, yet they were cool as snowmen.
Tom Wolfe brings the danger, the adrenaline, the burnt-to-a -cinder plane crashes to life in wonderfully sympathetic, excited, yet brilliantly crafted style.
This is the best of Tom Wolfe's books. Partly, I think, because he actually respected/admired his subject this time around.
I absolutely loved this book. It was so nice to read a romantic book about recent history, rather than the cynical political stuff you get spoonfed at University.

all-time fave - Rated
I was inspired to re-read this book recently by the BBC's Best Read survey. I got to thinking which was my favourite book, and narrowed it down to Catch 22 and this one by Tom Wolfe, which are the two I have gone back to most often over the years.

The Right Stuff is the story of the seven US Mercury astronauts, in their day the most famous men in the world, now - except Glenn - largely forgotten. It is brilliantly told in a style which exists in a grey area between journalism and the novel, developing a range of characters which are so precisely and subtly drawn that you feel you know them. The true brilliance of the book, though, lies in its main theme, that of the stuff itself, and the unspoken hierarchies and competitiveness which evolve in any masculine arena, not just this ultra-jock context.

Clever, insightful, captivating - a marvellous book you can read over and over again.