Hooking Up
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Only 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 boys and girls have never heard of anything that dainty. Today's 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 learning each other's names. And how rarely our hooked-up boys and girls learn each other's names!Tom 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 fields of genetics and neuroscience...to the reasons why, at the dawn of a new millennium, no one is celebrating the second American Century. Hooking Up is a chronicle of the here and now.
Listen to a conversation with Tom Wolfe.
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learnoutloud, February 17, 2006
Reviewer: learnoutloud
from Los Angeles, California
“Hooking Up” jumps around a lot as Tom Wolfe explores contemporary culture at the turn of the new millennium. But Tom Wolfe is an entertaining essay writer and he’s also a very good narrator (he narrates the opening and closing of this audio book) and it’s a fun listen through out. It starts out as an exploration of the sexual mores of contemporary America and Wolfe does a lot of hilarious wrist slapping. The next essay is probably diverts most from the topics of the book as he defends his novel “A Man in Full” against the criticisms of Norman Mailer, John Irving, and John Updike and makes a case for journalistic realism in novels which he sees that our society is craving. His next essay discusses the creation of the microprocessor I think and I found it very dull. But it picks up with his discussion of our magical faith in the consciousness-expanding world wide web and our faith in neuroscience to discover all the hard wiring of our souls. His last few essays he reads himself as he discusses the modern art world (which he’s famous for denouncing) and how it has ignored classical artists and how European “intellectuals” have invaded American culture spreading their cynicism, irony, and contempt about America. In the end he stands up for America as the best culture in the world despite his many earlier critiques and this he wrote in the year 2000. Now I wonder what he thinks of George W. Bush.
- Published:
2000
- LearnOutLoud.com Product ID:
H004258
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Audio CD |
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0743517768 |
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074351775X |
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