The Right Stuff, by Tom Wolfe

I'm a huge fan of the movie The Right Stuffbut admit I've never actually read the book before now. As expected, the two have a lot in common, although Wolfe spends a lot more time describing the one-sided antagonism between the astronauts and classic pilots than the film does. A common theme was how the press made it sound like the Mercury astronauts were the first people to ever ride a rocket, but "Yeager had done precisely that more than forty times. Fifteen other pilots had done it also, and they had reached speeds greater than three times the speed of sound and an altitude of 126,000 feet." The jet test pilots believed they belonged at the top of the aircraft food chain, because after all the astronauts were intended to be mere passengers. "There was very little action that an astronaut could take in a Mercury capsule, other than to abort the flight and save his own life. So he was not being trained to fly the capsule. He was being trained to ride in it." The public disagreed, however, and the first group of astronauts were instant heroes long before ever getting near a rocket. "All seven, collectively, emerged in a golden haze as the seven finest pilots and bravest men in the United States. A blazing aura was upon them all." Ironically, Tom Wolfe wrote about the self-aggrandizement of both the pilots and astronauts, but the only picture in the book is of the author and Wolfe's name on the cover is three times as large as the title.

First Sentence:

Within five minutes, or ten minutes, no more than that, three of the others had called her on the telephone to ask her if she had heard that something had happened out there.

Shadow of the Torturer, by Gene Wolfe

In a strange contradiction, I both didn’t care for this book and at the same time couldn’t put it down. The book has such abrupt direction changes between sections at times it feels more like a collection of short stories with a common hero than an actual novel. The first person narration is flat and unemotional, but instead of being boring it fits the character as his training to be a torturer is supposed to numb his feelings. The plot staggers between vignettes rather clumsily, but an undertone of commentary on humanity is a constant throughout; being delivered through the words of someone causing intentional pain for a living give the analysis a solid weight. Religion, for instance, is aptly summed up: “the authority that punishes no one while there exists a chance for reformation will punish everyone when there is no possibility anyone will become the better for it.”

While I found the plot pedestrian, the writing itself is magnificent. “The vanishing sun, whose disc was now a quarter concealed behind the impenetrable blackness of the Wall, had dyed the sky with gamboge and cerise, vermillion and lurid violet. These colors, falling upon the throng of monomachists and loungers much as we see the aureate beams of divine favor fall on heirarchs in art, lent them an appearance insubstantial and thaumaturgic, as though they had all been produced a moment before by the flourish of a cloth and would vanish into the air again at a whistle.” This rich verbiage kept me enthralled throughout, even where the actual story flagged. The ending is entirely too brusque; I understand this is the first volume of a tetralogy, but the plot simply stops dead with the narrator literally taking a break from the storytelling. “Here, I pause. If you wish to walk no farther with me, reader, I cannot blame you.” Glad to know I won’t be blamed, as I don’t expect to read the next book.

First Sentence:

It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future.