The Bonfire of the Vanities.

WOLFE, Tom.

$125.00

Item Number: 147056

Franklin Center, PA: The Franklin Library, 1987.

Signed limited first edition of the author’s first novel, privately printed exclusively for members of The Signed First Edition Society. Octavo, Smyth-sewn and bound in full top-grain leather specially processed for fine books by the Cromwell Leather Company with gilt titles and tooling to the spine in four compartments within raised bands, gilt decoration to the front and rear panels, all edges gilt, silk ribbon laid in, marbled endpapers, frontispiece by the author depicting a powerful scene from the book. Boldly signed by Tom Wolfe. In fine condition.

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).