Manhood in “A Man in Full” by Tom Wolfe, Father of New Journalism

Tom Wolfe writes about manhood from two perspectives: one, where holding on to principles is a must no matter what it takes; the other, where power, possessions, sexuality, foxiness, bigness is more preferable, no matter how you get them.

Although a novelist, Tom Wolfe is called the Father of New Journalism. He introduced literary elements in newswriting like embedded sounds, pauses, thoughts so that the image is made more clear and vivid, and interesting to the reader. He did this for featurized news. “On the road, you can see all these – varroom, varroom – cars of many colors- with flames aflaming, hot on the road.” This was the kind of language Tom Wolfe introduced to liven up the usual way of newswriting.

As opposed to news, novels provide more leeway for the writer to go creative, and Wolfe exploits that much liberty in this book. For example, his subjects at times are personified animals coupled with the proper adjectives. That would be the subject for the moment, and it is made more fun for the reader. An example: “Creepy Mouse no longer cared to cut off that deprecating remark. All he wanted was to go sleep on his waiting bed. Step gimp, step gimp, step gimp, step gimp.”

A jailhouse in this book went:  “The pod was going scrack scrack scrack scrrrraaaacccckkkk thra-GOOM glug glug glug glug motherfucker motherfucker motherfucker.” The first sounds referred to old, squeaking electric fans on walls, and the second one referred to toilet bowls being flushed. The rooms were so close to each other that every sound is audible to one and all in this jailhouse.

First published in 1998 by Bantam Books Canada, the novel informs the readers about realities in life like Get-out-the-vote money which practice sounds universal and coming in so many forms. It is not, after all, confined to countries of lesser stature. The book impresses that the whites have the money but the blacks have the power. This is underscored in elections, of course. In third-world countries like the Philippines, the parallel is expressed in terms of socio-economic levels. The bottom of the political spectrum is full and pregnant with the poor. During election times, their power is felt, and the Get-out-the-vote money is very much a reality. No matter how rich you are, the power is still not yours, for it belongs to the have-nots. We cannot pretend to be innocent about this.

The author is very much knowledgeable about the food industry, particularly freezing and how work is carried on with ice and ice blocks. He also knows much about gangs and gang wars and jailhouse life. Tom Wolfe addressed pollution in the air waves that normally is brushed aside by journalists. There are songs that teach wrong values and yet people pick them up, repeat them, and pass them on to generations. The lyrics can take on some sinister power and people believe in them and actualize them. For example, some songs carry disrespect for mothers and women in general, the loss of hope in life with nothing to offer, the ready surrender to the powerful, beauty in saying goodbye to hope, and the like.

The book is very rich with localisms, giving it much color. Though his character Charlie Crocker is white, he uses the language of the blacks or African-Americans, most of whom serve in his quail plantation.

Against preferences of some contemporary writers, the novel contains so many back stories and long introductions, but they do not distract the reader; rather they are the parts that give much texture to the story to be more enjoyable.

If there is something simple and most logical that the book could teach, it is about hands. Delicate hands are for delicate jobs like typing or encoding; hardened and developed hands are for heavy and weighted work. Each hand to its own size and capability. If you look for work, make use of the size of your hands and their strength to fit the job you are applying for.

For novel writers, this would be the question: With 34 chapters of 742 pages, how did the author structure the middle part so as not to drag and be able to hold on to the reader’s interest? It is easy to do a beginning and ending, but a middle part with so thick a book is a puzzle. 

Tom Wolfe had a character named Conrad Hensley that represented good conscience. This Conrad balances off the crooks and their crocked ways in the book. In Chapter 5, he is introduced as a worker in the Suicidal Freezer Unit of Crocker Global Food Industries.

He is found again in Chapter 11 where the author placed his inner cliff hanger. Working skillfully on Conrad Hensley, Tom Wolfe involved the feelings of the reader in a sustained... sustained... sustained deeper and deeper emotional level, with life and its rugged spikes entangling Conrad in every turn so that he could fall, fall, fall, but he keeps at it, standing tall. Nevertheless, someone is found flat on the ground with blood oozing from his head - and Conrad was seen standing by. Read this chapter and see if nothing happens to you!

Five chapters later, Conrad is in prison who doesn’t want to plead guilty for felony so that he could be pardoned. He says he isn’t guilty and there’s nothing to pardon, and so he remains in prison. He learns about jailhouse life. He learns how to tackle goons “using da mouth,” miraculously escaping from an impending homosexual rape.

Six chapters later, there is an earthquake breaking the prison grounds so that Conrad escapes. Six chapters more and he finds another copy of the book, The Stoics, the first of which he lost in jail. He continues reading it to the end, and embraces the principles of the Stoics since by nature Conrad is a kind soul who wouldn’t lie simply to save his butt.

In the next chapter, Tom Wolfe makes him unite with the rich-but-now-bankrupt Charlie Crocker who is full of dilemma. Conrad relays the principles to Crocker and together they travel the same path, the same philosophy.

In other words, the author enters Conrad in the chapters now and then, rewarding the reader, and urging him to go forward to find the end of it.

The book would end in a happily-thereafter mode if it stopped with Charlie Crocker’s speech, giving up all his possessions to his creditors, showing equanimity  amidst it all, revealing the ugly head of politics. He was being used to cosmeticize the damaged reputation of an obnoxious football player that made an institution so proud. In exchange for that favor, the powers that be would restructure his bank loans and lay off him. By this time, however, Crocker has lost all interest in possessions and so bared to the public the attempt to engage him to cover-up for a celebrated fool.

Crocker becomes a changed man, but the story did not end with his telling speech. It ends talking about a bad example – a man of the world. And with that, it tends to leave a bitter after-taste in the mouth. Why did Tom Wolfe have to go on? This is how being macho is described today and it stares you in the face!

The author had added an Epilogue and in this part Roger White is propped up like he is the main character – the lawyer that had wanted Crocker to lie, the one that enjoyed people looking at him and patting his back like it was a virtue scheming to save a rascal. “What about congress?” you hear him saying in the last chapter or Epilogue. He entertains running for politics after having had a little taste of some earthly glory.

It would take time to understand that Tom Wolfe is making a statement here. He is not entertaining in the Epilogue, having done that in the 33 earlier chapters. Manhood to the world is being worldly-wise but not valuing character. Crocker finds out how to be man in full just like Conrad. He doesn’t lie in exchange for laying creditors off him and his properties which he now considers as mere trifles. Tranquility can be found in standing for truth, not in being rich and powerful. Our lives are merely borrowed, he quotes a philosopher. If you lose yours, it is but a mere shank with a quart of blood, and you don’t really lose anything. At the end of the day, all you really own is your character and scheme of life.

While Crocker becomes a changed man for the better, recognizing “the spark of life placed his soul,” thus becoming a man in full, Roger White is also changing but in another direction. He finds public recognition enjoyable, just like the promise of advancement, power, and possessions - all that interested a worldly man. As described by philosophers, Roger White would be one who thinks of himself as “all belly and flesh and animal desire, giving way to animal impulses at the expense of the spark of life” in him. Clearly, the Epilogue wants to showcase greed. It is not at all connected with true manhood; it is the opposite of it.

 

Tell me a Story When You were Little: A Memoir that Teaches Discipline

THE STORY DEDICATED TO Stephen J. Warnock’s 9 grandchildren, revolves around a family that lived at Mt. Caroll in Illinois. Stephen’s father taught vocational agriculture at the Community High School. His work with the Smith-Hughes program of the federal government required him to connect much with the local farmers where the students lived. Set some several decades ago, most of the students participated in the FFA or Future Farmers of America. The father toured the country and all the back roads of the remotest parts, bringing with him his children as their age would allow. They, therefore, learned much from such exposure.

Writing his memoir by the seasons and their cycle, Stephen details how they were brought up as a professional farming family.  He had 4 brothers and they formed their own Warnock Nature Club. Learning nature together with discipline, in conducting their meetings, they used Robert’s Rules of Order.

The boys learned much about flowers, trees, birds, animals and were required to identify the species and label the parts correctly. The family kept encyclopedic references that the boys consulted, and identified the species they found depending on the behavior they observed. For example, if one found a bird he didn’t know about, he would stay at a distance and observe it for characteristics. Upon going home, he would look up references for identification. Then he would draw the parts and label them as close to reality as possible. The family had a lot of excursions to nature together.

At home, the little brothers each had assignments in feeding animals and cleaning their places. They observed strict discipline as in adhering to exact time of feeding and milking the animals every day before school, when they go home for lunch, and after school.

The story tells much about the values of parents bringing up children in the most proper way, letting them experience work and have a sense of responsibility even while very young. Here’s an excerpt from Stephen’s account -

When we moved to the farm, the pasture and the fields were infested with weeds. Dad worked hard to bring them under control, and as we grew older, he mobilized our help. He assigned us each a weed for which we were responsible and granted us the title of commissioner. Every time we saw one of these weeds, we were to destroy it. I was the Mullen Commissioner and took the job seriously. As time went by, I became rather fond of the Mullen Plant and hated to destroy it, as it did have some enduring characteristics. The ploy of making us commissioners worked because gradually we reduced the weed population in our pasture.

The common Mullen (See image left) may not look like weeds to others, but to farmers, they are a problem.

The book is suggestive of how government can help strengthen its agricultural sector and how it can help citizens by way of employing them in conservation projects. Most of all, for the ordinary reader, the book showcases how children should be formed to become useful citizens.

The writing? It is cramped and takes on the repetitive SVO pattern such that reading becomes monotonous. Subject-verb-object. Subject-verb-object. Subject-verb-object. Rarely does it shift from this pattern. When it does, it goes back again to the SVO pattern.

In some Filipino cultures, storytelling is used purposely to let children get bored and eventually fall asleep, such that there is really no plot, no logical direction of the story. But not so with this book. It is dedicated to the 9 grandchildren of the author who incidentally found no need for literary complexity such as varying sentence patterns. But the memoir is more of a piece to be read - not simply heard.

The book also exhibits many of those superfluous elements that are advised against in contemporary writing. For example, you don’t begin with, My name is so and so, but the author writing in 2002, does exactly it! The book opens to, “My name is Stephen J. Warnock.” There's still the need to adopt effective writing principles since readership would likely expand to public – not just the grandchildren. Authors owe readers that much.

To appreciate the story, one can just skip reading the long descriptions of terrain and follow the action where it goes. If one is observant enough, the author actually has a ribbon somewhere where he virtually neatly ties the beginning to the end and the book can be appreciated as having used some literary device. Where is that?

Somewhere in his earlier chapters, Stephen J. Warnock mentions about a great horned owl making his mating call: Oot, oot, too, woo, hoo, hoo. That is the promise of spring coming, the child narrator said. If you can ignore the long descriptions by the chapters, you can spot his owl hooting and simply begin from there. Then as the last chapter ends, after everyone and everything has been blasted cold by the outgoing winter, there comes again the mating call of a great horned owl, oot, oot, too, woo, hoo, hoo. That is the promise of spring coming, and another cycle begins – winter, spring, summer, fall – he wrote.

 

Privileged Lives by Edward Stewart: What the Novelist Knew

Privileged Lives is a novel about the rich and powerful and what they do in the dark – perhaps out of boredom. Take note: this is a novel.

Written in a very thick book (500+ pages), published by Delacorte Press in New York, the novel is quite captivating until the very end.

But for writers, and would-be writers, attention is best placed on the background knowledge of the author about many things which enabled him to write the novel.

What did Edward Stewart know about? Secret Societies and what they do, their link to powerful lawyers; police procedural and where the law comes in; media and what media can do to perpetuate lies; arts and how arts can be used by the rich in their pecking order; HIV and ARC (AIDS-related complex), their symptoms and how they are acquired; gays and gay life; priests, their sex needs and providers; cocaine and other prohibited drugs and their effects on the body; the drug and its link to crime; psychiatrists and their practice; custom-made lipsticks and their chemistry; fashion and what’s not correct in fashion; commercial buildings unoccupied, their strategic positions, and connection to crimes; what weird things idle people enjoy to see in weird sex. Armed with all of these, the author was able to weave up a novel where each character stands out as real being in the mind of the reader.

If you like the book, it means you’ve learned from Edward Stewart something of every element that he had introduced, beginning with comments from the characters to what happens to the characters as an effect, and the over-all chemistry the story is leading to. You may not like the story to end from the pleasure of having been acquainted with the characters as though they are real.

What’s the one word we can use to describe his use of these elements if not realism? The author worked so hard to present a realistic story.

Unfortunately, the book doesn’t seem to have printouts after 1988. It is very obvious the book is an assault on those in power. This novel could be classified as minority literature since its publication appears restricted.  There was no single review on it – at least when it was published.

Delacorte Press is part of The Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Did someone call? In the Philippines it would appear like that. One call from the powerful and off, the book goes!

Some reviews of the novel appeared only after 10 years in 1999, but still scanty. This time it was published by Amazon.com. The reviewers, though just a handful, said they liked the book. Few reviewers imply scanty circulation or very few customers. But the book is truly riveting until the end. Find a copy and read!

Back to the background knowledge of the novelist, does it take every novelist to know that much? Not necessarily. It depends on your story. Just like any piece of writing, your novel can be as simple as you want, as long as it comes out realistic. Focus on something that you know very well, something you have experienced first-hand. Some writers, in fact had assumed the life of a prisoner since they wanted to write realistic stories from prison. But this is extreme. It is just being able to breathe, think, and live the life of your character.

Saleability is not a gauge for a good novel. There have been millions of books sold on saleability alone because they cater to the taste of the buyer. The fact that some novels employ a mix of realism and surrealism and get sold means that the adult mind is still a child hungering for the surrealist, an escape from reality.

Some examples of surrealism would be a hand walking on the floor, a piece of cake floating in air, someone appearing on horseback and then gone in a whisk. There are novels that have these examples and yet they become best-selling. It is not the kind serious writing as art would employ. Would you be happy if you are known to be writing in this fashion?

A beginning writer would best take care to begin writing from reality if he is serious about writing – and not write just where easy money comes. He can do this by being sensitive about so many things, learning about diverse lives, and experiencing their world, even vicariously. Then he can begin to write with credibility.

 

Time Bound: Escaping from Plagiarizing

One way to tell if you are committing plagiarism in writing a research-based article or even an opinion piece is in the number of sources you are using: too few or only one; and the time you spend on the source.

Unless you are critiquing something, if you spend so much time writing on the ideas contained in one book or one source, chances are you are plagiarizing.

Is the book open by your desktop computer? How long? How many sentences have you copied? How many paragraphs?

Remember that long quotes taken from a published source is considered plagiarism - which is why the emphasis on time. Are you copying too much material from one source and staying there too long? You have to use your own words in such a way that you don’t steal other people’s ideas. In research, it is called “collecting others’ flowers” and that’s not acceptable.

Let’s say you use the dictionary or the thesaurus for synonyms of every word written in the paragraph so that they become yours. Do they really become yours? Absolutely not! Neither is re-arranging the words in a sentence of some source.

The safest way out is to tackle topics that you are familiar with. And the closest to familiarization is studying the subject with as many sources as possible. The variety can give enough angles from which to view your topic. Then you can have a tenable grasp of it rather than a tunnel vision from one source or a few.

Because you now have a wider perspective, you can escape plagiarizing. It will be easier to use your own words rather than hinge on someone’s – word for word, punctuation mark by punctuation mark. More yet, your knowledge has grown on the subject, and what you write can contribute to the knowledge of others. It is because you can now add to what was already written, even if by way of affirming some aspect or negating some. You then have activated some continuing debate.

But if you simply copy, there’s no addition made but just a subtraction – from you! Plagiarized materials don’t contribute anything. They destroy the character of the one producing them.

 

For Column Writing: Use the Written not the Spoken Language

How do newspapers select their columnists?

Now and then we read of columnists writing as though they are lecturing in a classroom or anchoring their program on television. The language is quite of the spoken kind.

Hence, one can read of expressions like, “Let me give you some realizations...” “Do (sic) you know that so and so...” “Don’t get me wrong,” “Here’s the deal...” Yes, I’m quoting from someone’s column that talks of business in a broadsheet. I have just read it and it prompted my topic today.

These expressions are not to be found in clear effective writing. These are a lot of clutter. Ideally, you go straight to the point without such unnecessary baggage.

Columnists are more of writers than speakers since they are being read, not heard. It is then expected that they come up to the level of writers, hence should follow principles in effective writing.

Does the name Inday Badiday ring a bell to you? Inday was known as Philippine television's "queen of showbiz talk.”  “Ate Luds” or Lourdes Jimenez Carvajal is a talker all right, but when she writes her column, she does not use spoken language. Her column comes out as a work or art - a careful piece carved out by a careful writer.

I loved to read Inday’s columns not for the gossip but for the way she expressed things. Her flair for literary expression is not surprising. She is the younger sister of Letty Jimenez- Magsanoc, former editor-in-chief of the Sunday Inquirer.

 

For Thesis Writers: Important Indicators and Research Objectives

AN OVER-CONFIDENT DOCTORATE student wanted to finish his course fast that he did not even consider what would take place in the research proposal stage. Perhaps his Department did not require a defense for the proposal. What was clear was that he went ahead and conducted his research. Then came the final defense. Since he was taking Doctor of Sociology, the question went to what happened to his cultural indicators? What was the culture of the majority of respondents? He had no answer for that. He merely assumed culture would not make any difference.

It happened that his mentor was not a Filipino. Naturally, he wondered if results would be different if the culture differed. Wasn’t he consulting him? In Sociology, culture always mattered.

Michael A. Costello, a sociology professor and native of Crystal Lake, Illinois died February 2, 1998 in a plane crash in the Philippines, according to Chicago Tribune News. This was some four years after his mentee failed to defend. According to the report, Mr. Costello was visiting his family in Manila when his commercial jet crashed into a 7,260-foot mountain 30 miles outside of a city where he had lived and worked, south of the country.

Off-topic, why do we mention this? Because the failed student can always say, “my mentor died so I was not able to finish my course.” The reason is not exactly true.

It is not unusual that we hear reasons like this. The mentor died. But the truth is that the mentor died from waiting way too long for the student’s input.

Culture as an indicator could not be surveyed again separate from other indicators. Research is not done that way. You have to prepare your instrument well and administer it one time.

Another student wanted to study how students could populate their school as his objective for doing research. How could that be a tenable objective when the course is School Administration? It would take on an Economics angle. Even if one’s bachelor’s degree is on Economics, it will not do justice for a thesis to a Master of Arts degree in Administration. The study should contribute to administration or school management, the current course.

Again, always consider your course.

 

Yo, Novelists! What do You Place in Your Chapter 1?

Character sleeping, dreaming, and  waking up to nothing? Funeral calls, death, psycho lurking around? Terrorist planting a bomb, rape scene? Protagonist in the middle of a bodily function like jerking off, peeing, vomiting? Cheesy beginnings with a play of words like “opening”? Opening what?

These are items literary agents dislike to see in a novel’s Chapter 1, writes Writer’s Digest University. If you want your book published, it is best to follow them. After all, literary agents are also editors, and they know what’s saleable to publishing houses. Working with an agent for publication or not, the recommendations are worth considering.

Here are more of their pet peeves: Starting your story with a battle, projecting characters as perfect heroes and heroines, inauthentic dialogue, over- description of the scenery.

More: Beginning with a killer’s point of view, sex and violence; a laundry list of character descriptions.

All of these slow down writing and it shows in their nature: Prologues that have nothing to do with the story; long, flowery descriptive sentences for introductions, character’s back-story, information dump.

These are patently unnecessary:  Introducing the narrator to the reader, introducing the character, setting up the scene, description of the weather, addressing the reader as in “Gentle reader.”

These are boring: An ordinary, predictable outlook, too much accounting.

And these cheat the reader: Adventure-dream stories where at the end, the author says it was only a dream; Character would find out later this and that; Character dies at end of chapter.

What do they want to see in Chapter 1? Action that hooks the reader, some mystery. Moreover, you do not tell but show through the character.