The Right Stuff
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Average rating4.2
A wonderful novel and perfect book club choice, The Right Stuff is a wildly vivid and entertaining chronicle of America's early space programme. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY US ASTRONAUT SCOTT KELLY 'What is it,' asks Tom Wolfe, 'that makes a man willing to sit on top of an enormous Roman Candle...and wait for someone to light the fuse?' Arrogance? Stupidity? Courage? Or, simply, that quality we call 'the right stuff'? A monument to the men who battled to beat the Russians into space, The Right Stuff is a voyage into the mythology of the American space programme, and a dizzying dive into the sweat, fear, beauty and danger of being on the white-hot edge of history in the making. 'Tom Wolfe at his very best... Learned, cheeky, risky, touching, tough, compassionate, nostalgic, worshipful, jingoistic...The Right Stuff is superb' New York Times Book Review
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An awesome read and an interesting perspective of the cold war, the early days of NASA, and of course... “the right stuff.”
This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader as part of a quick takes post to catch up–emphasizing pithiness, not thoroughness.
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I read this book about 2-3 times a year from Middle School to the first or second year of college, and haven't been able to do it since (I've tried off and on). But when Audible had a sale on this earlier in the year, I had to give it a shot. Especially with one of the stars of the remarkable movie adaptation doing the narration.
Now an audiobook of Wolfe is a tricky proposition (at best). Wolfe's a master stylist. But so much of it (to me anyway) is how the words are on the page. His idiosyncratic capitalization, punctuation, visual rhythms . . . it's all about how the text shows up in the book. But Quaid gets close enough. So I was able to fully enjoy and immerse myself in this story about the early years of the US/USSR Space Race—the test pilots around Yeager's feat and then transitioning into the Mercury Program and a little beyond.
Wolfe educates and then entertains with the way he tells the story, editorializes about the events and people, and captures the essence of the various people involved. Listening to this brought me back to the first time I read this book and reminded me why I fell in love with Wolfe.
Quaid did the near-impossible here, he got as close to humanly possible to capturing Wolfe's style, sensibilities and je ne sais quoi. He didn't quite get it, but I can't imagine anyone doing better. It's probably one of my favorite audiobook performances to date. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Quaid guy just might have a future in show biz.
