Prose and figurative language can feel too flowery and self-indulgent, but, if done right, they can make the writing memorable. This is how I felt after reading Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff, which chronicles America’s entry into the space race with Project Mercury. Wolfe, who spearheaded the New Journalism movement of the 1960s, is ever the provocateur with his use of subjectivism and narrative techniques to describe what it meant to compete against the Soviet Union in the race to get a man into space.
Unapologetic and jingoistic, Wolfe’s The Right Stuff celebrates the men who risked their lives to get to space. Written in 1979, the book focuses on the test pilots and the Mercury Seven astronauts selected for NASA’s Project Mercury – Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton – and likens them to warriors about to engage in combat while exhibiting heroism, grit, and courage; qualities Wolfe calls the “right stuff.”
Many aspiring astronauts were former Air Force pilots and test pilots who lived on a knife’s edge around danger like Chuck Yeager who broke the sound barrier with the Bell X-1 rocket plane in 1947. These aviators wanted to push the boundaries of what was possible – even if they sacrificed their lives to do so. Many test pilots and early astronauts died young due to training accidents and equipment malfunctions. To be considered among the best of the best, the pilot needed to have the “right stuff,” which Wolfe defines as a combination of having guts, moxie, or courage in the face of extreme danger. This also included reckless machismo. As Wolfe succinctly put it “believers in the right stuff would rather crash and burn” than request help or admit they made a mistake (24). Those who did not have the “right stuff” either died or were excluded from the group that had “it.”
Wolfe’s writing style takes on a rapturous and frantic tone throughout the work. He is not concerned about writing formally or objectively; he frequently uses run-on sentences to convey his enthusiasm throughout the book. This informality lets him convey his sense of awe about the Mercury Seven and those with the “right stuff” with winding sentences and verbose excitement.
The Right Stuff was adapted into a movie in 1983 and has been recently remade as a television show on Disney Plus, but the exuberant feel and feverish tone of the book is lost in translation. If you like adventure stories with a flair for the dramatic and with a sharp writing style, Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff is a must read.
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