On the other hand, "The Right Stuff" is a significant book and Wolfe's description of the alcoholic reporter waking up with a hangover in "Bonfire of the Vanities" is one of the great scenes in all of English literature.
Tom Wolfe, Ooh, don't get me started. Too late.
I only vaguely remember the scene to which you refer, and unfortunately, I don't actually have the book on hand to look it up. Regardless of any "great scene in English literature" that you might remember, Tom Wolfe infuriates me. That was the first of many books I have read on the American space program. When I read it I enjoyed it immensely for all its vivid imagery and exciting depiction of fighter jocks.
What irkes me now is that Tom Wolfe intentionally depicted these fellows as idiots. During his descriptions of the Mercury flights, he talked constantly about their ultimate goal of not 'screwing the pooch.' He very intentionally portrayed Gus Grissim (one of my personal heroes) as having completely "screwed the pooch." Now, there was some question about how that hatch blew prematurely. For a while Gus was assumed to be the culprit, but as NASA later learned, Gus was not at fault. Tom apparently didn't see that as a good story so he conveniently forgot to mention that after careful examination it was learned that a malfunction in the hardware, and not Gus's mistake, caused the loss of the spacecraft. I thought for a long time that Gus Grissim panicked and blew the hatch.
I'm sure that if I had a copy of the book, I could make my point more precisely. I could also cite a number of other passages in the book that are coloured to make a good story rather than present an accurate account of the history. I can't find the reference at the moment, but I know that one of those guys mentioned in his biography that Wolfe's portrayal of the events is full of exaggerations for dramatic effect.
