In 1979, Tom Wolfe published a classic of new journalism – the classic that has disappeared today, and new journalism, no matter how necessary it is, new journalism rather than classic, capable of looking at reality and what is accounted for. Distant, ironic and brutal, with a fittingly titled review – The Thing to Have. What Wolfe did was spend six years reconstructing it based on interviews and situations – he put himself into the situation, re-creating the North American space race from an elastic cut interspersed with editing beats. Especially how President Eisenhower turned a handful of test pilots into “canned meat”. Or that’s what they called the first astronauts.
funerals
It started with an episode titled Things You Must Have, a fascinating episode dedicated to the numerous funerals that a 25-year-old couple, a test pilot and his wife, have to attend every month. Because test pilots did nothing but what their name indicated: testing. They tried to break the sound barrier and get as far away from Earth as possible; They either froze, lost consciousness and control of the device, or exploded in the attempt. So they died, their friends went to their funerals, and the women lived in fear of the worst, becoming paranoid and losing their minds in the deafening noise of those test flights, because of course the houses are right there in the test area.
Wolfe, always admirably rebellious, was laughing at the system – as he fortunately always did: he was a fierce and humorous critic – largely thanks to this collection of experiments that failed – backed by NASA, whose slogan was: “Ours always fails ” – which led to the conquest of space by the United States, which at first seemed to have no interest in the face of a powerful Soviet Union capable of predicting anything. In 1983, a film by Philip Kaufman was released based on the book, titled The Chosen (currently available to watch on film), which is an extremely absurd yet historical work. But from an unfinished story.
Martha Ackmann is a journalist. He is 72 years old. She was born in Saint Louis, Missouri and once chaired the Emily Dickinson International Society. He served as president because he was an expert in his job. For nearly 20 years, Ackmann gave lectures on Dickinson at the poet’s home in Amherst, Massachusetts. Yes, such things happen. At least in the United States. Another thing Ackmann has done is the recently published Ediciones of The Forgotten Astronauts, the part of the story that Wolfe left out in his canonical, rebellious, and desacralizing What Should Have Been? Luciérnaga) was to write. have. Because while all of those astronauts were trained, 13 women were also trained with the same intention.
extreme machismo
Officially, the first woman’s journey into space took place in 1963. This journey was made by cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova. Seceded from the Soviet Union. Ackmann’s book doesn’t mention this, but Americans, knowing that there was no difference in the education of men and women when it came to the space race on the other side of the Iron Curtain, were wondering why. This was not the case in their case. Jerrie Cobb, one of the pilots who had broken the sound barrier more than once like her male counterparts by then, could tell they made her wear heels under her protective coveralls for the same reason. Because machismo was extreme, no matter how obviously derogatory it sounded.
Therefore, Ackmann’s book can be read as the opposite or hidden side of Wolfe’s, and to Wolfe’s misconceptions can be added the delusions of rudeness suffered by 13 female pilots who were selected to train in the shadow of men. The pilots were never recognized as astronaut candidates due to fear of a society that “had never considered that someone who was not a white man might also have the desire and ability to fly into space.” A feast of details reflecting a sometimes terrifying, always exciting society, including the narrative return of Tom Wolfe, who was and still lives in his own situation as a product unable to think for himself. he is not even in the middle of a war, no matter how magnificent it is.