Hooking Up

In Hooking Up, America's maestro reporter/novelist gives America an MRI at the dawn of a new age.

Only yesterday boys and girls spoke of embracing and kissing (necking) as getting to first base. Home plate was going all the way. That was yesterday. Here in the year 2000 we can forget about necking. Today's girls and boys have never heard of anything so dainty. Today third base is going all the way. Home plate is being introduced by name.

Wolfe ranges from coast to coast chronicling everything from the sexual manners and mores of teenagers...to fundamental changes in the way human beings now regard themselves, thanks to the hot new fields of genetics and neuroscience...to the inner workings of television's magazine-show sting operations.

Printed here in its entirety is Ambush at Fort Bragg, a novella about sting TV, and a short story, "U. R. Here", about a New York artist who triumphs precisely because of his total lack of talent. Also included are essays ("My Three Stooges", "The Invisible Artist") which explore radical changes about to sweep the arts in America.