TOW #12 IRB "The Right Stuff" by Tom Wolfe

         Tom Wolfe's, The Right Stuff, is an entertaining and informative read that I would highly recommend to anyone looking for a good non-fiction book that flows more like a traditional work of fiction. Wolfe seamlessly blends the abstract details from his own mind with the actual events and realities of the situations that he depicts throughout his work. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I am liking the book so far, and this factor of something being so concrete, yet also feeling "larger than life," definitely added to my personal level of enjoyment. Throughout approximately the first half of the, The Right Stuff, Wolfe focuses on the U.S.'s fascination with space exploration in the post-war era. However, I found the book to be more about the space race than the actual travel into space. In addition, the most important factor of the novel is the characters: whose bravery, and at times absurdity, eventually made the voyage into space possible for the nation. This daring and readiness to take enormous risks seemed to be exactly what Wolfe would describe as the right stuff to get the job done. When he published the book in 1979, Wolfe was already an acclaimed journalist who wrote for a wide variety of newspapers and magazines. His extensive body of non-fiction work makes him much more credible to modern-day readers, but also helped him compose the book when he was writing. The first Americans landed on the moon less than ten years before the release of, The Right Stuff, and so Wolfe was able to utilize those who were still alive as primary sources for the book.
         Throughout the first half of his book, Wolfe uses a combination of strong imagery and juxtaposition to highlight the courage of the Mercury Seven, who were NASA's first astronauts. The juxtaposition is really helpful for readers, as it makes a much more stark difference between the astronauts and the test-pilots who almost got the job instead. He shows the difference in personality, training, and ethics in order to reveal the complexity of the issues that faced the men. Additionally, he uses strong imagery in order to grab the audience's attention and add detail. From the very beginning of the book, the powerful descriptions that he writes really set the tone for the rest of the novel, "And today, here in Florida, in Jacksonville, in the peaceful year 1955, the sun shines through the pines outside, and the very air takes on the sparkle of the ocean. The ocean and a great mica-white beach are less than a mile away," (Wolfe, pg. 2). He also uses imagery to turn the audience's attention to what really matters: the people, rather than the events.