(4 of 7)
No one in race-conscious Atlanta, except the girl's furious father, wants to see this explosive matter go public. Mayor Jordan tells Roger, "This case has the potential to do more damage to this city than anything since the murder of Martin Luther King or the Rodney King riots, because it gets right down to the core of the white man's fear. Do you see what I'm saying?" Roger sees. But the rumors are out there already; a local Internet gossip sheet is adding new details almost daily. Quickly, the city's white business interests and black leadership huddle and come up with a plan. The only person who can defuse or at least damp down this problem is...Charlie Croker.
Right about here this roller coaster of a novel starts to get really complicated, especially ethically. The proposal Roger White, at Mayor Jordan's behest, brings to Charlie boils down to this: get acquainted with the Cannon, talk over your shared experiences as Georgia Tech football stars, and then appear at a press conference to say that Fareek is a fine young man, charged with no crime, and that everybody should just simmer down.
Why on earth would Charlie do that? Roger explains: "Once you've met with Fareek, you decide whether or not to go ahead with the press conference. If you say yes, then you let us know, and immediately all pressure from PlannersBanc will cease. If you then do your part at the press conference, it will cease for good, and the bank will restructure the loans on the most generous terms imaginable."
Charlie understands what defending Fareek will do to his reputation: "Who could he look in the face after that? Who of all the people he had entertained at Turpmtine would ever come again? On the other hand, if he refused--then suppose he lost Turpmtine, lost everything he had, including his house on Blackland Road--was wiped out! demolished!--the result would be the same, wouldn't it! No one would come to visit him then, either!"
No summary of A Man in Full can do justice to the novel's ethical nuances and hell-bent pacing, its social sweep and intricate interweaving of private and public responsibilities, its electric sense of conveying current events and its knowing portraits of people actually doing their jobs. Who, besides Wolfe, would have thought that banking and real estate transactions could be the stuff of gripping fiction? Who else would have set a scene, the most over-the-top in the whole novel, in the breeding barn at Turpmtine, where Charlie, in a misguided attempt to impress his guests from Atlanta, makes them, male and female alike, witness a tumultuous mating between one of his stallions and a mare? "I attended just such an event in mixed company in south Georgia," Wolfe says, "and I'll never forget seeing that."
The author is seated on a sofa in the 12-room apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side that he shares with Sheila, his wife of 20 years, and their son Tommy, 13. Daughter Alexandra, 18, has flown the nest for her freshman year in college. Wolfe, slender and looking at least a decade shy of his 68 years, wears at home pretty much what he has worn in public since he became a highly visible Manhattan journalist in the '60s: a trademark white suit and vest, a high-necked blue-and-white-striped shirt complemented by a creamy silk necktie.