Tom Wolfe might be called the literary son of Mark Twain. Famous for his white suits and his high-speed, highly exclamatory, highly italicized delivery, Wolfe is one of America's leading prose stylists and satirists, although he demurs at the latter label. A brilliant phrasemaker, Wolfe's own labels, such as radical chic and the right stuff, have stuck, becoming part of the cultural landscape, as has his name for the 1970s, "the me decade." After more than twenty years as one of the leading advocates and practitioners of the New Journalism, Wolfe succeeded in 1987 with his first novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities. First published serially in Rolling Stone from August 1984 to August 1985 and revised for book publication, the novel rode both the hardcover and paperback best-seller lists for weeks, garnering critical praise as well as attacks.

It was the kind of beginning one might expect from a boy...