Pensamiento - Literatura

VI. Comments on Contents by Chapters

§34. Wolfe starts the book by exploiting literary resources around the issue of Death and Pilots (ch. I) and moves onto offering statistical data on their relation to death-especially, the percentage a military pilot has of dying excluding combat duties (ch. II), like a journalist. The presentation is literary for this is most engaging for readers because the author is trying to transmit that plus involved in the understanding of the issue at stake, the human issue of courage which elicits from the collective subconscious mythical understanding. "What interested me was not simply the discovery that it was possible to write accurate non-fiction with techniques usually associated with novels and short stories. It was that-plus. It was the discovery that it was possible in.journalism .to excite the reader both intellectually and emotionally" (Wolfe, The New Journalism 28).

§35. "Chapter I. The Angels." The author uses the metaphor of pilots being angels in the air and wives being angels on earth, their lives hoovering over the risk of death. The aim is to present through the wives' eyes the terrible kind of death pilots are likely to face and the fact that something prevents them from quitting, the military notion of courage-of being able to push the outside of the envelope successfully in military flights. The chapter ends with the media asking a pilot's wife "how do you feel?," which is the emotional side of the question to be explored throughout the book. (And which is not mentioned by Wolfe outside the 15 chapters.)

§36. Wolfe uses the most literary chapter to place readers in the wives' perspective, to lead us parting from that more emotional point to the process of understanding the military pilots' psychology. We begin to grasp the meaning of what it is to have the right stuff through the wives' processes of accepting the situation. "For she now knew . She now knew the subject and the essence of this enterprise, even though not a word of it had passed anybody's lips. She even knew why Pete . would never quit, never withdraw from this grim business, unless in a coffin. And God knew, and she knew, there was a coffin waiting for each little Indian" (14).

§37. In "Chapter II. The Right Stuff," after completing the death issue with statistical data on the likelihood of death in the profession, Wolfe moves onto the military notion of who can occupy the position of being a hero. It expands on the previous material, but leaving the wives behind to focus on the pilots' mentality: we learn about the pilots' fraternity and their career pyramid, the ziggurat; about how only those pushing the outside of the envelope and having the right stuff are able to occupy its summit.

[T]he world was divided into those who had it and those who did not. [.] a man should have the ability to go up in a hurtling piece of machinery and put his hide on the line and then have the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness, to pull it back in the last yawning moment-and then to go up again the next day , and the next day, and every next day, [.] and, ultimately, in its best expression, do so in a cause that means something to thousands, to a people, a nation, to humanity, to God. [.] A career in flying was like climbing one of those ancient Babylonian pyramids made up of a dizzy progression of steps and ledges, a ziggurat, a pyramid extraordinarily high and steep; and the ideas was to prove at every foot of the way up that pyramid that you were one of the elected and anointed ones who had the right stuff and could move higher and higher [.] to join that special few at the very top, that elite who had the capacity to bring tears to men's eyes (17-8).

§38. The key question around how they can bear the risk of dying is immediately solved : those who die in a flight-Fallen Angels?-failed in some way: "One theorem was: There are no accidents and no fatal flaws in the machines; there are only pilots with the wrong stuff" (25). The end of the chapter announces the place where these principles rule, Edwards Air Base, depicted in the next chapter.

§39. "Chapter III. Yeager" rounds up the picture of the world of pilots by dealing with the model hero, Yeager. It offers detailed information on the pilots' lifestyle at Muroc and Edwards military bases: the Low Rent and the Flying and Drinking and Drinking and Driving styles, the military version of the cowboy-hero. Values directing professional performance are transferred to personal daily life. Notice this builds up on the mythic as opposed to what could be a journalistic description of a job (see §18, "When dealing with Yeager"). The chapter closes anticipating the Mercury project, presented as "spam in a can," this is, from the pilots' point of view.

§40. After having established the main contents depicting the greatness of the affair, that of military courage, the writer will proceed to offer insights on competitivity and myth-building not at Edwards or Muroc, but around the Mercury program.

§41. "Chapter IV: The Lab Rat" a thematic title again taken from the pilots' point of view. Pilots volunteer for the NASA project: the NASA/Pentagon briefings, the medical tests and the selection of pilots. Pilots are continually put in a powerless or humiliating position, as if they were lab animals or tools used in an experiment. (Redemption will come in chapter XIII, see §53 and XIV, see §56.)

§42. In "Chapter V. In Single Combat" the theme of heroism is introduced by linking it to ancient warfare and the myth of the single-combat hero-there is the analogy of the Mercury astronauts being turned into heroes before their feat by the media, the modern bards. Here is a selection of quotes from 94-9:

"It is my pleasure," said Glennan, "to introduce to you-and I consider it a very real honor, gentlemen- [.] the Nation's Mercury Astronauts!" (89).

'Could I ask for a show of hands of how many are confident that they will come back from outer space?' [.] [T]hey had volunteered to sit on top of the rockets-which always blew up! (93).

By the next morning the seven Mercury astronauts were national heroes. It happened just like that. Even though so far they had done nothing more than show up for a press conference, they were known as the seven bravest men in America. They woke up to find astonishing acclaim all over the press. There it was, in the more sophisticated columns as well as in the tabloids and on television (94).

[.] Just as the Soviet success in putting Sputniks into orbit around the earth revived long-buried superstitions about the power of heavenly bodies and the fear of hostile control of the heavens, so did the creation of astronauts and a "manned space program" bring back to life one of the ancient superstitions of warfare. Single combat had been common throughout the world in the pre-Christian era [.]. In single combat the mightiest soldier of one army would fight the mightiest soldier of the other army as a substitute for a pitched battle between the entire forces (95-6).

[.] The development of the modern, highly organized army and the concept of "total war" seemed to bury [the belief in single combat] forever. But then [.] the atomic bomb was invented [.] [and this] encouraged the growth of a new form of superstition founded upon awe not of nature, as archaic magic had been, but of technology. During the Cold War period small-scale competitions once again took on the magical aura of a "testing of fate," of a fateful prediction of what would inevitably happen if total nuclear war did take place. [.] 1957. The "space race" became a fateful test and presage of the entire Cold War conflict between the "superpowers," the Soviet Union and the United States [.], a preliminary contest proving final and irresistible power to destroy (97).

[.] [Astronauts] were risking their lives for their country, for their people, in "the fateful testing" versus the powerful Soviet Integral. [.] [T]hey would receive all the homage, all the fame, all the honor and heroic status . before the fact . of the single-combat warrior (98).

[.] bestowing honor upon them before the fact . upon our little Davids . before they got up on top of the rockets to face the Russians, death, flames, and fragmentation. (Ours all blow up!) (99).

§43. As mentioned, the main content and title of this chapter is probably Wolfe's own personal contribution for the interpretation of "the larger truth" as well as an example of one of his best resources to build credibility. One of the reiterated ideas in the book is posed in this chapter for the first time: the press can do more than make people know about something. Institutional reporting ( and Wolfe here too, see §§32-33) pursue shaping the Public's Emotion, in a way which is consistent with the aims of those in power:

It was as if the press in America, for all its vaunted independence, were a great colonial animal, an animal made up of countless clustered organisms responding to a single nervous system. In the late 1950's (as in the late 1970's) the animal seemed determined that in all matters of national importance the proper emotion , the seemly sentiment , the fitting moral tone should be established and should prevail; and all information that muddied the tone and weakened the feeling should simply be thrown down the memory hole. In a later period this impulse of the animal would take the form of blazing indignation about corruption, abuses of power, and even minor ethical lapses, among public officials; here, in April of 1959, it took the form of a blazing patriotic passion for the seven test pilots who had volunteered to go into space. In either case, the animal's fundamental concern remained the same: the public, the populace, the citizenry, must be provided with the correct feelings! One might regard this animal as the consummate hypocritical Victorian gent. [.] Even so, why was the press aroused to create instant heroes out of these seven men? [.] The forgotten term, left behind in the superstitious past, was single combat (95).

§44. The chapter ends stating the fact that the templates in the flying ziggurat are sliding. We will see throughout the book how this occurs and how astronauts reach the apex in spite of all.

§45. "Chapter VI. On the Balcony" describes the retouch heaven for these new angels , the balcony of fame where the Media leads the modern single combat hero:

Betty and the other wives came bursting forth like great blossoms before the ten million readers of Life in a cover story in the September 21, 1959, issue. [.] They hardly recognized each other! [.] Life had retouched the faces of all of them practically down to the bone. [Read on] [.] The headline said: SEVEN BRAVE WOMEN BEHIND THE ASTRONAUTS (123).

[.] There was something crazy about it, but it was marvelous. The week before, in the September 14, 1959, issue, Life had ushered Gus and the other fellows out onto the Pope's balcony with a cover story headlined READY TO MAKE HISTORY that left no doubt whatsoever that these were the seven bravest men and the seven greatest pilots in American history, even if it was necessary to go easy on the details (124).

§46. "Chapter VII. The Cape" takes us back to Cocoa Beach, back to pilots and their low rent lifestyle, but at a time when the place is being used by the pilots in the Mercury program. There is some degradation involved in their after work lifestyle if we compare their low-risk after-work activities, i.e. parties, with the model presented with Yeager in chapter III-high-risk after-work activities, to keep up with the myth of courage. But pilots keep focused: "They were all beginning to realize that the stakes were tremendous. With the first flight into space, the holy first flight, one of them would become not only the preeminent astronaut . but also the True Brother at the top of the entire pyramid" (139).

§47. "Chapter VIII. The Thrones" deals with the two competitors the astronauts have, which follow the monkey threat: the engineers ("the engineers now looked on, eyebrows arched, as the guinea pigs [pilots] set about . altering the experiment ," 147) and the X-15 program at Edwards. In any case, the thrones are specifically designed for each of the 7 Mercury pilots, which anticipates the public outcome.

§48. "Chapter IX. The Vote" expands on the embarrassing or ridiculous position Mercury pilots are put in by comptetitivity with monkeys: "An ape made the first flight! [.] had performed flawlessly [.] was an astronaut. He was the first one" (178); "They were now using the capsule itself for simulation-just as the chimpanzees had" (184). And continues with myth-building by the media: " Life ran a big story with pictures of Glenn, Grissom, and Shepard on the cover with the headline: THE FIRST THREE. [.] [T]he notion of "the first three" struck [the rest] as a humiliation. In their minds they were now labeled "the Other Four." [.] They had been . left behind !" (180-1). The first man to be sent to space is chosen by the vote of the other six candidates and it is not Glenn, but Shepard. In any case, the media's favorite, Glenn, will eventually represent the single-combat hero by himself for the mass.

§49. "Chapter X. Righteous Prayer" is about the first manned flight to space by the US government and the events unfolding around it. The righteous prayer, " Please, dear Lord, don't let me fuck up " (197), keeps readers focused in the issue of the right stuff.

§50. "Chapter XI: The Unscrewable Pooch" is about the second flight, and poses the new order: astronauts are solidly establishing themselves at the top of the flying pyramid. In spite of the fact that according to laughing pilots at Edwards, "Grisson had just fucked it , screwed the pooch " (230), for politicians and their contribution to myth-building this is no obstacle.

[T]he Mercury astronauts had an official immunity to three-fourths of the things by which test pilots were ordinarily judged. They were by now ablaze with the superstitious aura of the single-combat warrior. They were the heroes of Kennedy's political comeback, the updated new frontier whose symbol was a voyage to the moon. [.] NASA had just been handed a carte blanche for a moon project. Just six months before, the organization had been in live danger of losing the space program altogether. So nothing about this flight was going to be called a failure. It was possible to argue that Grissom's flight had been a great success . There had just been a small problem immediately afterward. As for public opinion, the loss of the capsule didn't really matter very much. The fact that the engineers needed [it] to study [.] certainly created no national gloom. [.] Far from having a tarnished record, he was a hero. He had endured and overcome so much (231).

§51. "Chapter XII. The Tears" is the public climax. It describes the third space flight by Glenn, after which readers witness the power of the single-combat hero, the possessor of the right stuff, to make people cry. From the climax in 272-9:

People were crying, right out in the open, as soon as they laid eyes on John, and perhaps the rest of them, too. They were all swept up in the wave now. [.] This horrible rat-gray city was suddenly touching, warm! You wanted to protect these poor souls who loved you so much! Huge waves of emotion rolled over you (276).

[.] And what was it that had moved them all so deeply? [.] They knew it had to do with the presence, the aura, the radiation of the right stuff , the same vital foce of manhood that had made millions vibrate and resonate thirty-five years before to Lindbergh-except that in this case it was heightened by Cold War patriotism, the greatest surge of patriotism since the Second World War. Neither the term nor the concept of the single-combat warrior did they know about, but the sheer patriotism of that moment-even in New York, the Danzig corridor!-was impossible to miss. We pay homage to you! You have fought back against the Russians in the heavens! There was something pure and rare about it. Patriotism! [.] what the multitudes showed John Glenn and the rest of them on that day was [.] They anointed them with the primordial tears that the right stuff commanded (277).

§52. The power of the media is certainly linked to "the mass," to people's power as the Public, and they actually come together in the crucial moments where "historic significance" is an official highlight. In this chapter, especially in 274-9, and in spite of almost no explicit reference to the media, the prevailing point of view is that of the media-this is how they are present. It is as if the Public were watching on TV Glenn's landing and the parade in New York. Notice this point of view and also the change of tenses, to historic present, for liveliness:

Once John's plane touched down at Patrick on February 23, the wave became so big it simply carried everyone along with it. The fellows and the wives and the children were all out at Patrick, waiting for John's plane, and the Vice-President was on hand, along with about two hundred reporters. [Comment: only media people notice media people in climax moments.] Johnson was right up there at the head of the mob with Annie and the two children. He had gotten next to her at last. [Shifting point of view to Johnson or Wolfe's irony?] Johnson was right beside her now, out at Patrick, oozing protocol all over her [Shifting to Annie's point of view or Wolfe's irony?] and craning and straining his huge swollen head around, straining to get at John and pour Texas all over him [Wolfe's comment]. The plane arrives and John disembarks, a tremendous cheer goes up, a cry from the throat, from the diaphragm, from the solar plexus, and they bring Annie and the two children forward . the holy icons . the Wife and the Children . the Solid Backing on the Home Front . and John is too much! He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a handkerchief and dabs his eye, wipes away a tear! [Read on.] [.] looking up at him from their seats. In absolute adoration, too! That was where the tears started! The tears-they couldn't hold them back. [.] They applauded, cheered, snuffled, wheezed . A couple of them said, "Amen!" (274-5).

§53. "Chapter XIII. The Operational Stuff" poses a new competitive stance, operational (military pilot efficiency) approaches to space flights-as represented by Schirra, and Cooper later on-versus more humanistic approaches-as represented by Scott's flight (civilian efficiency), devoted to scientific research. But engineer proficiency cannot actually compete with what has come before, in terms of the climatic ritual around heroes. Proficiency is irrelevant for the Public-who have had their climax in the preceding chapter with Glenn's flight-and the politicians-Kennedy was more concerned with Soviet missiles in Cuba at that point. What matters is there are brave men willing to die for the patriotic Cause who have become popular thanks to the media. However, in a more comprehensive reading the main function of this chapter and the next is more specific. "[Schirra] practically out-yeagered Yeager" (304). "Scott was beginning to see what the point, our point , was" (306). Schirra's approach re-establishes the ziggurat order, reconnecting the astronauts to yeagerism . Wolfe apparently unwelcomes operational despise towards Scott's research style. But the fact is that Schirra will regain pilot status for astronauts because his courage and efficiency will occur with a lack of Great Show recognition by politicians and the public, something that seems to connect back to pilots at Edwards.

§54. "Chapter XIV. The Club" shows the post-climatic picture of the single-combat hero world created by the media and the NASA:

By and by Conrad started carrying Glenn's bag, as well as his own, and facing up to the role. [.] If Conrad carried both bags, they could keep moving. Glenn could wave and sign autographs and shake hands and chat and beam that terrific smile at everybody [.] As for Conrad, [.] he was now an astronaut, officially, but not to the mobs of autograph seekers. They couldn't have cared less. He looked like some little guy who carried bags for John Glenn. What was more, that was what he felt like. That was about all the second group of astronauts was doing: chores for the first, for the one, the only, the Original Seven (308-9).

§55. The apex of the ziggurat is now occupied by a different sort of hero, but it is still the flying ziggurat:

That was all that any really competitive military pilot upon the great ziggurat could focus on any more: becoming an astonaut. [.] [O]nly three years later, [.] the seven Mercury astronauts had become the True Brotherhood. They were so dazzling you couldn't even see the erstwhile True Brethren of Edwards Air Force Base any longer" (309).

§56. Most importantly, following what was announced in the preceding chapter, astronaut dignity is recovered by means of its connection to the military:

[on Gordo Cooper] It was second-generation Yeager, now coming from earth orbit. Cooper was having a good time. He knew everybody was in sweat down below. But this was what he and the bodys had wanted all along, wasn't it? They had wanted to take over the complete re-entry process-become true pilots in this damned thing, bring her in manually-and the engineers had always shuddered at the thought. Well, now they had no other choice, and he had the controls (325). [...] No one could deny it . no bretheren, old or new, could fail to see it . when the evil wind was up, Ol' Gordo had shown the world the pure and righteous stuff.

Over the next week Gordo became the most celebrated of all the astronauts aside from John Glenn himself (326).

§57. This is Wolfe's farewell to the NASA pilots, ill-treated by engineers and manipulated by the media but eventually revealing their command over their affairs, whether popular or not, for those possessing the right stuff are not vulnerable to anything but the fear of not having it, according to the book.

§58. "Chapter XV. The High Desert" will depict the image that will last in the readers' mind, the picture of Yeager, the true hero, the military pilot who not only confronted death, but was also successful in handling the danger. But let us consider this chapter in the framework of the whole narration.

§59. TRS begins and ends with the anonymous hero. In pages 3 and 5 (ch. I) readers found minute descriptions of a military pilot's likely fate, being "burned beyond recognition," with no tears coming from the public. This will only be picked up at the end of the book in the least mocking chapter of all (ch. XV): Yeager has burned in flight, "There's not a goddamned thing left in the manual or the bag of tricks or the righteousness of twenty years of military flying . Chosen or damned!" (340), and he has survived as a possessor of the most righteous stuff . He has "burned beyond recognition" in a metaphorical sense-his feat is not recognized as heroic by anyone, not even the boy who happens to find him, who is mostly disgusted by Yeager's look. After the ejection rocket propels him up at 90 miles an hour, weightless in midair, 7,000 feet above the desert, Yeager realizes the seat is dribbling lava "in that very instant the lava -it smashes into the visor of his helmet . Something slices through his left eye [.] It's pouring down inside the lid and down his face and his face is on fire [.] He's burning! . There's rocket lava inside the helmet" (340-1).

The kid [driving by] stands there hypnotized and horrified. From the look on the [his] face, Yeager can begin to see himself. His neck, the whole left side of this head, his ear, this cheek, his eye must be burned up. His eye socket is slashed, swollen, caked shut, and covered with a crust of burned blood, and half his hair is burned away. The whole mess and the rest of this face and his nostrils and his lips are smeared with the sludge of the burning rubber (342).

"My God! . you look awful" [.] The medics found Yeager standing out in the mesquite, him and some kid who had been passing by. Yeager was standing erect with his parachute rolled up and his helmet in the crook of his arm, right out of the manual, and staring at them quite levelly out of what was left of his face, as if they had had an appointment and he was ontime (343).

§60. Wolfe's final picture is the most likely to remain in the reader's mind, touching, as it does, the mythic patriarcal archetypes our culture has constructed over the emotional ground of human admiration to courage.

 

Next: Part VII. Contextualizing a Concern for Credibility

Please, quote the author and the site: michelle renyé, at mujerpalabra.net.
Another quotation style: michelle. "Wolfe's The Right Stuff. Some Comments on Formal Issues & the Timely Chanting of Military Heroism. An Essay on a Best-Seller". Mujer Palabra. 2005. Path: Pensamiento. Date of Access <https://www.mujerpalabra.net>.