The Right Stuff (Masterplots II: Nonfiction Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Tom Wolfe
- First Published: 1979
- Type of Work: History/ New Journalism
- Time of Work: 1947-1963
- Setting: Edwards Air Force Base, California; Cape Canaveral, Florida; and Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston, Texas
- Principal Characters: Chuck Yeager, John Glenn, Alan Shepard, Walter Schirra, Donald K. “Deke” Slayton, Gordon Cooper, Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Scott Carpenter
- Genres: Nonfiction, History, New Journalism
- Subjects: 1950’s, 1960’s, United States or Americans, Courage, Space flight or travel, Space ships, stations, or vehicles, 1940’s, Ambition, Heroes or heroism, Biography, Technology, Pilots or pilotage, Aeronautics, Astronauts
- Locales: Space, Houston, TX, Cape Canaveral, FL, Edwards Air Force Base, CA, Langley Air Force Base, VA
Form and Content
Neither a conventional historical account nor a historical novel, Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff is one of the finest extant examples of what is usually termed the “nonfiction novel,” a genre that Wolfe helped to create. In telling the factual story of the early stages of the United States’ manned spaceflight program, Wolfe uses many of the techniques of fiction. While such factual considerations as time, place, technical and scientific data, and biography are scrupulously accurate, the fictional techniques of point of view, stream of...
[The entire page is 2667 words long]
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