The truth, of course, is that all these men likely played roles in Croker’s past and personality. A Man in Full was, in fact, A Man in Composite.

Members of the Piedmont Driving Club likewise enjoyed their turn in the book overlooking Freaknik traffic, no matter how far removed from polite society.

“As soon as both feet touched the pavement of Piedmont Avenue, she started dancing, thrusting her elbows out in front of her and thrashing them about, shaking those lovely little hips, those tube-topped breasts, those shoulders, that heavenly hair.

RAM YO’ BOOTY! RAM YO’ BOOTY!

A rap song was pounding out of the Camaro with such astounding volume, Roger Too White could hear every single vulgar intonation of it even with the Lexus’ windows rolled up.

HOW’M I SPOSE A LOVE HER, CATCH HER MACKIN’ WITH THE BROTHERS?

— sang, or chanted, or recited, or whatever you were supposed to call it, the guttural voice of a rap artist named Doctor Rammer Doc Doc, if it wasn’t utterly ridiculous to call him an artist.

RAM YO’ BOOTY! RAM YO’ BOOTY!”

Hale says he was there when this fictional scene, or something like it, took place, recalling how word got around to Wolfe, who so memorably slotted it into “A Man in Full.”

Appearing, even in fictional form, as a Tom Wolfe character was thrilling. But some men with the biggest and best claims of Wolfe inspiration would rather leave the distinction off their resume.

Chief among them, perhaps, is then-Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell, a notable absence from the Wolfe fanfare of 1998. Much is made in “A Man in Full” of Mayor Wesley Dobbs Jordan’s light skin, an issue his much darker mayoral challenger spins into campaign fodder by referring to Jordan and his ilk as “beige half brothers.” The fictional mayor goes so far as to hit the tanning bed before winning another term in office.

In reality, the light-skinned Campbell won re-election in 1997 over a darker challenger named Marvin Arrington Sr., with skin tone a rumored political subplot. Campbell released a statement when the novel hit bookshelves touting the “history of racial harmony” in Atlanta.

Twenty years later, and with political career wrecked by a tax-evasion scandal, Campbell stands firmly behind the statement.

“(The skin tone issue) wasn’t accurate then, and it’s not accurate now,” says Campbell, still a Southwest Atlanta resident. “Quite honestly, I thought that was one of the most disturbing, inaccurate and disappointing aspects of the book.”

Campbell says the novel as a whole wasn’t accurate when it comes to Atlanta politics and that he should know.

“I was actually a mayor of Atlanta, so I know the narrative is inaccurate,” he says. “But it’s a fictionalized version and not presented as a nonfiction work. It’s a stylized, fictionalized presentation, and in that regard it’s interesting, but certainly not accurate.”

Wolfe also caught flak from the last white mayor Atlantans elected, Sam Massell, who held the office from 1970 to 1974. When Wolfe came to Atlanta, Massell served (and still does) as president of the influential Buckhead Coalition. Massell sent Wolfe public relations materials on Buckhead upon learning about the novel and initially invited Wolfe to deliver the keynote speech at his group’s exclusive annual luncheon.

When he got a closer look, Massell made a public show of disinviting Wolfe to speak, sparking a feud between the two men.

Now 90, Massell still proudly turns in six-day work weeks, and still says he made the right decision in disinviting Wolfe.

“I saw an advance review, which made me realize that he was butchering Buckhead, not boosting Buckhead,” says Massell. “Up until the time I saw the advance review, I was being fooled.”

Massell, Atlanta’s first Jewish mayor, disagreed not only with Wolfe’s depiction of Atlanta’s leaders, but with their own reception of the work.

“The book fed so many people’s egos. People were insisting that they were Charlie Croker, and they could point to this sentence or that indicator as the reason why,” Massell says. “‘A Man in Full’ told about people doing things that I wouldn’t be proud of. If it’s fiction, fine, but if it’s me, it’s not fine at all. It’s ugly. It’s mean. But they didn’t see it that way.”

In the end, however, Massell figures his conflict with Wolfe played as a minor subplot at best, perhaps driving a few more sales of the book but not figuring much in the wider picture. He still hasn’t read it from cover to cover.