{"product_id":"9780374103828","title":"Hooking Up","description":"\u003cstrong\u003eHooking Up\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor(s): Tom Wolfe\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eOnly yesterday boys and girls spoke of embracing and kissing (necking) as getting to first base.  Second base was deep kissing, plus groping and fondling this and that.  Third base was oral sex.  Home plate was going all the way.  That was yesterday.  Here in the Year 2000 we can forget about necking.  Today's girls and boys have never heard of anything that dainty.  Today first base is deep kissing, now known as tonsil hockey, plus groping and fondling this and that.  Second base is oral sex.  Third base is going all the way.  Home plate is being introduced by name.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnd how rarely our hooked-up boys and girls are introduced by name!-as Tom Wolfe has discovered from a survey of girls' File-o-Fax diaries, to cite but one of \u003ci\u003eHooking Up's\u003c\/i\u003e displays of his famed reporting prowess. Wolfe ranges from coast to coast chronicling everything from the sexual manners and mores of teenagers... to fundamental changes in the way human beings now regard themselves thanks to the hot new field of genetics and neuroscience. . .  to the inner workings of television's magazine-show sting operations. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePrinted here in its entirety is \"Ambush at Fort Bragg,\" a novella about sting TV in which Wolfe prefigured with eerie accuracy three cases of scandal and betrayal that would soon explode in the press.  A second piece of fiction, \"U. R. Here,\" the story of a New York artist who triumphs precisely because of his total lack of talent, gives us a case history preparing us for Wolfe's forecast (\"My Three Stooges,\" \"The Invisible Artist\") of radical changes about to sweep the arts in America. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs an espresso after so much full-bodied twenty-first-century fare, we get a trip to Memory Mall.  Reprinted here for the first time are Wolfe's two articles about \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorke\u003c\/i\u003er magazine and its editor, William Shawn, which ignited one of the great firestorms of twentieth-century journalism.  Wolfe's afterword about it all is in itself a delicious draught of an intoxicating era, the Twistin' Sixties. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn sum, here is Tom Wolfe at the height of his powers as reporter, novelist, sociologist, memoirist, and-to paraphrase what Balzac called himself-the very secretary of American society in the 21st century.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReview(s):\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e“At heart he is and always will be a terrific reporter. \u003ci\u003eHooking Up\u003c\/i\u003e provides a great introduction to Wolfe the nonfiction stylist: the peerless portraitist, the contrarian social critic and the literary bomb thrower. The book's title is a sexual metaphor, but in Wolfe's hands, it means making connections among the culture's disparate corners. And nobody hooks up better than he does.” —\u003ci\u003eMalcolm Jones, Newsweek\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“The rich retrospective of one of America's finest writers.” —\u003ci\u003eMichael Pakenham, Baltimore Sun\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“The publication of \u003ci\u003eHooking Up\u003c\/i\u003e, Wolfe's first book of short pieces in 20 years, is reason enough for celebration . . . Delicious.” —\u003ci\u003eBenjamin Svetkey, Entertainment Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Turn to the three essays grouped under the title \"The Human Beast,\" and you will be in Wolfe heaven. The first of these--is an exuberant history of the birth of Silicon Valley...'Digibabble, Fairy Dust, and the Human Anthill' moves from the semiconductor industry to the Internet and then, by a kind of intuitive leap, to neuroscience and sociobiology. 'Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died' delves into brain imaging and the genetic determination of character. Jesuit priest Piere Teilhard de Chardin, closet Catholic Marshall McLuhan, and scientist Edmund O. Wilson are the pivotal figures of these two essays.” —\u003ci\u003eMichael Upchurch, Seattle Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“I love Tom Wolfe 'Whenever some big bizarro thing happens' I want the man in the white suit to do his usual exhausting reporting, turn the labels inside out and the hypocrites upside down . . .and tell me what's what in one of those jittering, dazzling riffs of his.” —\u003ci\u003eMaureen Dowd, The New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“His fans will find plenty of evidence that Wolfe remains willing to plunge into 'the raw, raucous, lust-soaked rout that throbs with amped-up octophonic typanum all around [him]' and that--especially in his nonfiction--he can still grab the brass ring.” —\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly (starred)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eISBN:  9780374103828\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e ","brand":"Farrar, Straus and Giroux","offers":[{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":40593694949582,"sku":"9780374103828","price":28.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0600\/7029\/7806\/products\/getimage_d80e18f4-eeab-43e9-8868-3961c3fdb4d6.jpg?v=1637791256","url":"https:\/\/pickwickbookshop.com\/products\/9780374103828","provider":"Pickwick Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}