The Bonfire of the Vanities.

WOLFE, Tom.

Item Number: 143990

New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1987.

First edition of the author’s first novel. Octavo, original half cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To Mary Long with my very best wishes Tom Wolfe.” Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Fred Marcellino.

The Bonfire of the Vanities is a novel, but it is based on the same sort of detailed on-scene reporting as Wolfe's great nonfiction bestsellers, The Right Stuff, Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. And it is every bit as eye-opening in its achievements. It is a big, panoramic story of the metropolis-the kind of fiction strangely absent from our literature in the second half of this century-that reinforces Tom Wolfe's reputation as the foremost chronicler of the way we live in America. "A big, bitter, funny, craftily plotted book that grabs you by the lapels and won't let go" (The New York Times Book Review).