Books, Arts & Manners

The Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe (Farrar, 659 pp., $19.95)

Once—and, as far as I can tell, only once, and that was 14 years ago—Tom Wolfe got reckless. In 1973, in a 52-page essay introducing a collection of the best of the New Journalism, the veil slipped for an instant, and the high priest of vanity-of-vanities journalism, who has made a small fortune demonstrating the entertainment value of other people’s hubris, revealed the truth to the entire world: he takes himself seriously.