SO, what are these ten great books of the past half-century, anyway? Reading from top to bottom, I find that NATIONAL REVIEW has chosen nine heavyweight works of history, philosophy, economics, sociology . . . and, er, a blockbuster novel by a high-flying ex-newspaperman who wears ice-cream suits, hangs out with bikers and astronauts, and throws exclamation points around like birdseed in an aviary. What’s wrong with this picture?
Not a thing-though it might well have come as a surprise to the first readers of Tom Wolfe’s first novel that The Bonfire of the Vanities would be hailed 18 years later as a conservative masterpiece. In 1987 Wolfe wasn’t yet widely viewed as a man of the Right, though those with eyes to see had already figured out that his politics were at least a little bit heterodox, if not in any overtly ideological way. Nor has he become an ideologue in the ensuing years (though his ex-admirers on the left insist he’s done just that).
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