The Bonfire of the Vanities. by Wolfe, Tom - 1987

New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1987. First edition of the author's first novel. Octavo, original half cloth. Inscribed by Tom Wolfe on the front free endpaper. Near fine in a near fine price-clipped dust jacket. Jacket design by Fred Marcellino. A sharp example of a bulky book that is prone to wear. 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).