The Bonfire of the Vanities.

WOLFE, Tom.

Item Number: 37012

New York : Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1987.

First edition of the Wolfe’s first novel. Octavo, original half cloth. Presentation copy, lengthily inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper to editor David Kent in the year of publication, “To David Kent with thanks for a grand time and much high living in Toronto Tom Wolfe December 4, 1987.” Fine in a fine price-clipped dust jacket. A nice association.

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). Basis for the 1990 film adaptation starring Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis and Melanie Griffith.