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Title: Bonfire of the Vanities (Part One) by Tom Wolfe, John MacDonald ISBN: 0-7861-0202-0 Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks Pub. Date: 01 December, 1990 Format: Audio Cassette Volumes: 9 List Price(USD): $62.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.45 (118 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Brilliant Satire That Nails The 80's Down Flat!!!
Comment: I cannot believe that it has actually been over a decade since I read Tom Wolfe's THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES; it is a brilliant and hilarious entertaining work of satirical fiction, and a dead-on accurate social commentary of everything that made up the 1980's, commonly (and accurately) known as The Greed Decade. This includes the incendiary racial conflagrations that had been simmering throughout the 1970's that finally began to unravel during the 80's, aided and abetted by an increasingly sensationalist media that practiced underhanded "divide and conquer" tactics in order to keep the middle and working classes down by improperly (and sneakily) shifting the discussion from class to race.
Wolfe captures all that here, albeit in a lighter tone, by following four separate tracks concurrently, and how they all come together: Financially successful but amoral and philandering nouveau-riche bond trader Sherman McCoy, professional successful but financially wanting assistant prosecutor Lawrence Kramer, professionally unsuccessful and perpetually inebriated British-born tabloid 'journalist' Peter Fallow, and socially powerful (but under-respected) self-proclaimed African-American leader Reverend Reginald Bacon. The bonfire that their vanities create is fascinating; but what is best about this book is the insightful and real-to-life humor/social commentary that Wolfe weaves into the story throughout. If you're a relatively young reader who was born in the 80's and thusly do not remember it the way that, let's say, those of us born in 1967 do, then the reading of this book is absolutely essential to understanding all the different dysfunctional facets that made the 1980's the way it was.
Do not be put off by the story's length (705 pages); it is so enjoyable and is such a compulsive page-turner that it is likely that it will only take you a week or less to get through it all. Pick this one up and treat yourself to the hilarious world of THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES---and if you must, rent the 1990 Brian De Palma-directed misfire and see just how totally inept Hollywood was in capturing this world. THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES has earned its proper place one of the greatest---and most important---works of fiction in the 20th Century.
MOST RECOMMENDED; AGES 17 & UP
Rating: 4
Summary: Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast
Comment: Lot of useful reviews here. No one mentions Wolfe's 24-page introduction, 'Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast,' which is excellent in itself as an overview of the alleged death of the novel, The New Journalism, non-fiction v. fiction & his own evolution as a writer. The introduction is worth a read on its own if you're a journalism student, a would-be or actual writer or just interested in the publishing world. As for the rest of the book, it's excellent. Wolfe is a master of the set piece, the extended vignette beautifully observing a situation or person. He is not so good at endings, which is why I picked four stars rather than five. I felt identically about his later "A Man in Full," and it didn't stop me enjoying the heck out of the book. If you enjoy his fiction, his non-fiction is well worth checking out as great examples of very controlled, observant reporting & writing. I particularly enjoyed "From Bauhaus to Our House," an extended essay about modern architecture, and "The Painted Word," ditto on modern art.
Rating: 5
Summary: A true "social" novel
Comment: At some point in the 1980s, Tom Wolfe published an article in Harper's magazine promulgating the death of the social novel. The article caused a little stir among the literati, and sent legions of younger authors into cigarette-stimulated frenzies, hurriedly working on churning out the next great American "social" novel; like a fresh Americanized Dickens for the impending turn of the century. Well, it turns out Wolfe himself was doing the exact same thing, and it makes one wonder if the portending article was nothing more than an early plug for his novel-of-the-decade-to-define-the-decade.
"Bonfire of the Vanities" is most certainly a smart and transcending novel, completely cognizant of the politics of an era defined by greed and lack of sympathy. Reading it now as we bulldoze on past the millenium mark, it seems just as appropriate and necessary as ever before. Wolfe really has created a masterpiece here, with all the types of characters one would expect from late 1980s New York: the smug stockbroker; the weaselish journalist; the fawning assistant D.A. All these people are arrayed amid a boiling cauldron of vanity which exudes the societal malfunction of the era.
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Title: A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe ISBN: 0553580930 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 05 October, 1999 List Price(USD): $8.50 |
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Title: Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street by Michael Lewis ISBN: 0140143459 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: October, 1990 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Barbarians at the Gate : The Fall of RJR Nabisco by Bryan Burrough, John Helyar ISBN: 0060536357 Publisher: HarperBusiness Pub. Date: 27 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe ISBN: 0553380648 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 05 October, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Predators' Ball: The Inside Story of Drexel Burnham and the Rise of the Junk Bond Raiders by Connie Bruck ISBN: 0140120904 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: June, 1989 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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