ABSTRACT
All run into Atlantans for whom "the one thing they can't stand"—as one of Tom Wolfe's characters in A Man in Full puts it—is "the idea that somebody in New York might be calling them Southern hicks". Anything short of fulsome praise for their city just feeds Atlantans' deep-seated rubophobia, and Wolfe's book is not exactly a puff piece. That whatever it has to say about Atlanta is being heard by a lot of people only makes matters worse. But Atlanta's image police may be getting smarter. Atlanta magazine's editor-in-chief agreed: "It's just a book". But the Post wasn't ready to let Atlantans get away with affecting New Yorkerly indifference. Inevitably, Wolfe has been compared to Margaret Mitchell. But Atlanta really is its star, and if Atlantans breathe deeply and think about it they can't be unhappy with the way that Wolfe's bravura depiction of their city gives it almost mythic power.
