Bonfire of the Vanities Cassette + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Bonfire of the Vanities Cassette

After Tom Wolfe defined the '60s in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers and the cultural U-turn at the turn of the '80s in The Right Stuff, nobody thought he could ever top himself again. In 1987, when The Bonfire of the Vanities arrived, the literati called Wolfe an "aging enfant terrible." He wasn't aging; he was growing up. Bonfire's pyrotechnic satire of 1980s New York wasn't just Wolfe's best book, it was the best bestselling fiction debut of the decade, a miraculously realistic study of an unbelievably status-mad society, from the fiery combatants of the South Bronx to the bubbling scum at the top of Wall Street. Sherman McCoy, a farcically arrogant investment banker (dubbed a "Master of the Universe," Wolfe's brilliant metaphorical co-opting of a then-important toy for boys), hits a black guy in the Bronx with his Mercedes and runs--right into a nightmare peopled by vicious mistresses, thin wives like "social x-rays," slime-bag politicos, tabloid hacks, and Dantesque denizens of the "justice" system. If the Coen and Marx brothers together dramatized The Great Gatsby, Wolfe's Bonfire would probably be funnier. Many think his second novel, A Man in Full, is deeper, but Bonfire will never die down. You might find it interesting to compare the film The Bonfire of the Vanities, a fascinating calamity perpetrated by the geniuses Brian De Palma and Tom Hanks, with The Right Stuff, one of the very best films of the '80s. --Tim Appelo Read More

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  • Product Description

    2 cassettes / 3 hours
    Read by John Lithgow

    Against a New York landscape teeming with detail and the kind of dead-on observation that is Tom Wolfe's trademark, we meet Sherman McCoy, a young investment banker who's got it all: the right high-paying, high-powered job on Wall Street, the right connections, the right co-op, the right wife and child, the right mistress.

    Life is good for Sherman McCoy . . . until . . . he's involved in a freak accident in the Bronx.

    Suddenly, prosecutors, politicians, the press, police, clergy, and assorted hustlers high and low are closing in on him, licking their chops.

    Here is a big, rich, panoramic story of a city where everybody is burning with the itch to Grab It Now.

  • 0394573552
  • 9780394573557
  • Tom Wolfe
  • 10 March 1988
  • Random House US Audio
  • Audio Cassette (Cassette)
  • Audiobook
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