It’s my understanding that most of the astronauts themselves appreciated The Right Stuff (though hardly any of them liked the movie), save for one thing: Wolfe’s character assassination of Virgil “Gus” Grissom. Just one wonderful sequence in a book chock full of them.
It’s some incredbile writing for sure, but obviously there’s no way anyone could know what Ham was thinking during the mission it’s all Wolfe’s imagination, and it’s a lot of fun. His thoughts and feelings and fears, up to the laugh out loud moment at the end where he’s taken out to the press pool to be photographed and thinks these photographers are more humans who are going to strap him up and put him through more grueling tests (“Fuck this!”). This entire sequence of Ham being sent up is gripping and hilarious – and it’s entirely from the perspective of Ham himself. Take for example the flight of Ham, a chimp who was trained rigorously to handle a sub-orbital flight before an actual human (Alan Shepard) was sent up. But then those dry nonfiction books don’t feature grand setpieces like Wolfe delivers throughout the novel, many of which are courtesy his own gifted imagination. Wolfe has clearly done his research, and met with many of the astronauts and their wives, but his usual tendency for exaggeration is in place, and there are no footnotes or anything to provide further details. Maybe it’s because the book isn’t like your typical dry piece of nonfiction.
It's kind of suprising that The Right Stuff was such a hit.
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