Small man in a white suit

I'm reading Tom Wolfe's 'A Man In Full' at the moment, having read 'Bonfire of the Vanities' about a year ago. Neither book is particularly great, and it's mainly my inability to give up on a book once I've started it that keeps me reading. I am interested to know though why Wolfe is so fixated on muscle groups. Is it as simple as the fact that he's an absolutely tiny man who presumably doesn't have much in the way of abs? He lists various muscle types with the same breathlessness that Fred Dibnah named steam pioneers.