The Bonfire of the Vanities

by Tom Wolfe

Like more than one Englishman in New York, he looked upon Americans as hopeless children whom Providence had perversely provided with this great swollen fat fowl of a continent.

Was vodka truly odorless? He devoutly hoped so.

One had the sense of a very rich and very suave secret legion that had insinuated itself into the cooperative apartment houses of Park Avenue and Fifth Avenue, from there to pounce at will upon the Yanks’ fat fowl, to devour at leisure the last plump white meat on the bones of capitalism.

It was the drinker’s hour, that hour in the dead of the night when drinkers and insomniacs suddenly wake up and know it’s all over, this sleep dodge.

grim remains of the joys of the flesh.