The Bonfire of the Vanities/The Right Stuff

by Tom Wolfe

A single volume contains two New York Times best-sellers by a popular contemporary author, The Right Stuff and Bonfire of the Vanities, both of which have been made into major motion pictures.

Genres: Fiction

725 pages, Hardcover

First published September 20, 1994

About the author

Wolfe was educated at Washington and Lee Universities and also at Yale, where he received a PhD in American studies.

Tom Wolfe spent his early days as a Washington Post beat reporter, where his free-association, onomatopoetic style would later become the trademark of New Journalism. In books such as The Electric Koolaid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, and The Bonfire of the Vanities, Wolfe delves into the inner workings of the mind, writing about the unconscious decisions people make in their lives. His attention to eccentricities of human behavior and language and to questions of social status are considered unparalleled in the American literary canon.


He is one of the founders of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

Tom Wolfe is also famous for coining and defining the term fiction-absolute .

http://us.macmillan.com/author/tomwolfe

Reviews

[Tej · Rating 4 out of 5]

Because I have already seen both movies, I can't help but compare the books to the movies. Starting with The Bonfire of the Vanities, I remember people who loved the book hated the movie--even more than usual. I remember thinking the movie wasn't so bad. Now that I've read the book, I understand the vitriol. The character played by Tom Hanks is an unredeemable asshole. Despite being a great actor, Mr. Hanks can never pull off being such a jerk. And Bruce Willis was supposed to play an alcoholic Englishman with sophisticated contempt for all things American. Again, horribly miscast. Melanie Griffin was fine as a voluptuous Southern belle with a vicious streak, but physically her character was supposed to be a tall brunette. Now as for the book itself, it was brutally funny. I had a lot of fun with it at first. But it dragged on too long. There wasn't a single sympathetic character. (Although I am really curious to know what New Yorkers had to say about the book when it first came out.) By the end I just didn't care what happened. Also, the end really fizzled. It was almost as if Wolfe wanted to keep going but knew he had to wrap it up. All in all, a worthwhile read but with limitations.

The Right Stuff, on the other hand, was an excellent movie. Ed Harris and Sam Shepherd particularly played the respective roles of John Glenn and Chuck Yaeger superbly. And, I thought it was quite faithful to the book. One difference is that Wolfe's commentary was really snarky, and I don't remember that coming through in the movie. Overall, it's a very entertaining historical narrative. He did a wonderful job of presenting the post-WII United States and explaining the social phenomenon of the space program and especially the astronauts.

[Sharonlee]

Loved The Right Stuff! Got a great deal more from it than the movie, of course, but that's to be expected.