Book Review
Sprawl in Full 
Tom Wolfe’s American Landscape for the 90s

By Robert Jaquay

A Man in Full, a novel by Tom Wolfe. Bantam Books New York (1999). 787 pp, $850 paperback.

Despite years of real estate experience and an unbroken string of wealth-generating developments, Charlie, author Tom Wolfe’s protagonist in A Man in Full, miscalculates the pace of Atlanta’s regional dynamics (my term, not Wolfe’s). He faces financial ruin after constructing a gargantuan, opulent project. “There it was, the tower, the mall, the cineplex, the hotel-apartment complex, the immense swath of asphalt...for parking.” Beyond the most recent ring of exurban development and, even more crucial, outside the reach of the interstate highway system. “Croker Concourse” sits stranded in splendid, vacant, and unprofitable isolation.

From this dilemma, concisely described in only a few pages, the rest of Wolfe’s sweeping tale unfolds. As he did so masterfully in earlier novels – such as The Right Stuff, a chronicle of the Mercury astronauts during the Cold War, and Bonfire of the Vanities, a depiction of one man’s self-absorption during the greed-is-good 1980s – Wolfe captures the zeitgeist of an American decade.

A Man In Full also has many of the characteristics of a delightful Dickens novel. It’s populated by a host of well-drawn, colorfully named characters, starting with Charlie. (I couldn’t tell if Croker is supposed to sound like “croak” or “crock,” but either would fit.) The parade of characters also includes his new wife and baby, their household servants, an ex-wife and teenage son, lawyers, bankers, Atlanta’s mayor, plantation hands, blue-bloods, red-clay farmers, a college football star, his coach, an accountant, imprisoned (then escaped) felons, warehouse workers, and the flight crew on Croker’s private jet. I grew to care about some, remained indifferent to others and even hoped a few would suffer their richly deserved comeuppance.

As Dickens uses London like an additional character – a dark, brooding presence exerting influence over all his human characters – Wolfe uses place (rather, many specific places in and around Atlanta) to shape the people he portrays and to convey mood, social stratification and other essential nuances. One example is “Turpmtine,” Charlie’s beloved plantation refuge where quail hunting and horse breeding remain high art, more ornamental than useful. The reactions of visitors to the place mark them as old money, new money or striving middle class. Run by a small army of old retainers more attached to the land and its rituals than to Charlie, this bucolic throw-back is so expensive to run that continued existence of the place depends upon Croker’s uninterrupted, sprawl-generated cash flow. As financial pressures mount , the established order of the estate is threatened. Wolfe adroitly conveys these tensions and the resulting pseudo-serenity of Turpmtine.

The plot moves on multiple, intertwining levels, shifting scenes, updating the reader on one person, then another, then back again. Somehow, it all ties up neatly by book’s end. So, on the whole, this is an artful and entertaining novel.

Yet, I have lingering reservations. I take issue with the book’s tone regarding sprawl. Wolfe, in his descriptions of Atlanta’s chronic outward push, is at best neutral, casting no value judgment on the ever expanding scene he conveys. He never confronts the effects, intended or not, that sprawl plays upon the racial divides, the regional economy or the environment of Atlanta. Despite all the vivid place descriptions – whether of Croker Concourse; Atlanta’s grimmest slum; Turpmtine; downtown Atlanta during Freaknik, the annual college spring break; the Mayor’s suite at City Hall; or numerous other locales – Wolfe never conveys the sense that they truly connect, that the fate of one particular spot vitally affects all the others, let alone Atlanta as a metropolitan whole.

Further, Wolfe suggests that Charlie’s faults as a developer are merely about timing. “Had to leapfrog the future, didn’t you Charlie! A few years down the line somebody would make a fortune off what he had put together there, once the outer perimeter highway was built, but for now – too far north, too far from the old city, Atlanta itself. For now —”

It’s revealing that Wolfe acknowledges by name only one expert on sprawl – Joel Garreau. Garreau coined the term and first described the phenomenon of “edge cities,” the agglomerations of office parks and shopping malls that have suddenly sprung up on the outerbelt highways of American cities. In doing so, Garreau excessively lionized the exurban developer, underestimated the role of public investment in infrastructure that enables edge city development to occur, and gave short shrift to the negative consequences of edge cities on traditional downtowns, urban core neighborhoods or first-ring suburbs. Like Garreau, Wolfe ends up painting a partial – certainly not the “full” – picture of sprawl.

Perhaps it is unfair to critique this otherwise enjoyable book on such a narrow basis. A Man In Full is not about sprawl, per se, as much as it is about a driven man who creates it. Besides, fiction is not a policy paper; some artistic leeway is allowed.

But it is important to consider how Wolfe’s treatment will shape public opinion on sprawl. His book is a best seller, already vastly outselling any nonfiction work discussing sprawl and sustainability (and the inevitable movie version has yet to appear). Given Wolfe’s vast audience and reputation for capturing the essence of an era, A Man In Full may well leave a lasting impression about urbanization and development on America’s collective conscience.

And what might that notion be? Contrary to growth management advocates who believe that more sustainable forms of development are possible and desirable, Wolfe imparts the acquiescent message: Sprawl exists. So get used to it.
 

In the early ‘90s, while with the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission, Robert Jaquay wrote and frequently presented Dynamics of the Cleveland Region, which framed the discussion of urban sprawl locally. He is an associate director of The George Gund Foundation and serves on the NFG Board of Directors.
 

Reprinted with permission from EcoCity Cleveland, Ideas and Tools for a Sustainable Bioregion. For more information on this excellent regional publication, call them at 216-932-3007 or visit their web site at www.ecocleveland.org.
 

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