A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe
Published 1998 · 756 pages · 204,000 words · about 16 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is A Man in Full to read?
A Man in Full scores 45 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 40 out of 100
- Wolfe's detailed Atlanta vocabulary, business and race terms.
- Sentence structure: 42 out of 100
- Flowing journalism-influenced sentences.
- Abstraction: 45 out of 100
- Questions of masculinity and American success.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- Dense with Atlanta social detail across 700+ pages.
- Narrative indirection: 40 out of 100
- Wolfe presents panoramically; meaning clear.
- Symbolic density: 45 out of 100
- Charlie Croker's empire symbolizes American hubris.
- Ironic distance: 50 out of 100
- Wolfe's satire is pointed but not cruel.
- Resolution withholding: 40 out of 100
- Plot threads resolve; Stoic conversion is final answer.
- Structural complexity: 50 out of 100
- Multiple storylines across Atlanta society.
How A Man in Full is regarded
A Man in Full holds a literary regard score of 59 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.