Dakota Bartosch

Mrs. Gardner
English/Per. 4
8 November 2015

Annotated Bibliographies:
Bonfire of the Vanities,
by Tom Wolfe

Sutherland, John. "Big Bad Wolfe."

London Review of Books, 1988. Web.

John Sutherlands review of Tom Wolfes

The Bonfire of the Vanities
is rather jaded, as reviews go. Sutherland describes fairly accurately the
happenings in the book, occasionally stopping betwixt flawed
parenthetical citations to pepper in his own
cultured
opinion of the

bohemian
lifestyles depicted in Wolfe's omnifaceted tale of vanity's grim
whimsy in "the Babylon of capitalism,"
(Wolfe)
New York City. It is a mostly
benign review, lacerated by some classic British affectation all we simple
Americans have grown so darn fond of. Sutherland commends Wolfe for his
ability to draft an intriguing story, but simultaneously puts him down
for not writing in a style conducive to hardline intellectualism, which
naturally is embedded in cool rationalism, not this raw animalism so
often portrayed in
Bonfire
.
Funnily, Sutherland's writings reminded me of one of the main
characters in Wolfe's book: a British journalist by the name of Fallow, who

also happens to be a high functioning alcoholic, chronic and ignorant

hypocrite, and journalistic hack, contorting the truth in his articles
constantly just to inflate his own salary and ego. Now I don't think
Sutherland is even close to that bad, however, that being said, I sure
didn't find what he had to say about the book to be very wise or objective more aggressively scholastic, and needlessly loud. It's as though Mr.
Sutherland didn't even attempt to immerse himself into Wolfe's story, and
thus found it to be a foreign and unpalatable experience; such a failure of
immersion lies at the fault of the reader, of course, for the book is great
if you just buckle under its theme and style and just go with it (actually,
most books are that way, I've found). Had Sutherland conditioned himself as
a reader more properly, maybe then he would have enjoyed the story more;
that's all I'm saying.

Hoby, Hermione. "

The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe." The Guardian,
2010. Web.
So... not the most detailed review out there. A little cursory, but I
suppose it gets the job done. Hermione Hoby writes a few paragraphs
on the dominant features of
Bonfire of the Vanities
, which are, and
this is widely accepted, the greed, ethnocentrism, political
corruption and gloaming machismo of the 1980s, New York. Many a
critic hath stated to wit (and I'm paraphrasing here): Tom Wolfe's

Bonfire of the Vanities

quintessentially encapsulates 1980s eastern
Americana.
Ms. Hobby's take on this on this statement is not unique, but
much in agreement with it. Honestly, she doesn't have all that
much to say that hasn't been said before a few dozen times in a
few dozen fashions. Perhaps I ought to have chosen a more
developed review to showcase here, but, in my defense, her
understanding of the book reflects the general consensus, and
that deserves exhibition.

Cole, Bruce. "Tom Wolfe Interview."

National Endowment for the Humanities,
2006. Web.
Tom Wolfe coolly exhibits the masterful range of his learned lexicon
in this lengthy interview with Bruce Cole of
The Jefferson Lecturer.
They discuss the evolution of literature - Wolfe's own past
experiences within the field -, transhumanist psychology, the
development of the illustrative arts, architecture, and even
tailorship with great detail and pedantic references to recognized
achievers from each respective field.
The Bonfire of the Vanities
is
only brought up once, and in a rather anecdotal capacity, for Wolfe
only mentions how difficult the book was to write, as it was his first

attempt at a bona fide novel (he actually had to write it in

installments, which were published monthly by
The Rolling Stone).
Wolfe's intelligence is utterly encyclopedic, but it's his
intellectual rigor that really marks him as a remarkable
individual. He comes off as righteously clinical, and is by all
accounts a diverse, somewhat eccentric man, intriguing and
articulated. Now, I know I sound like I'm idolizing him, but I'm
not; if I were, that would go against his own individualist
credo, and thus any attempted emulation of him would be
paradoxically fraudulent, as individuality is measured by
how little you emulate or conform to others. Heh... such a lucid
statement... reminds me of his own intellectual rhetoric. Maybe
he his is rubbing off on me a little.

"
Tom Wolfe"
.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, date N/A. Web.
Now here's a nice and neutral piece of expository writing for ya: a
bio, simple enough, cut-and-dry. Here's his full name (Thomas
Kennerly Wolfe, Jr., if you're interested), his many literary
achievements (along with concise analyses of some of the more
prominent ones), and even a few pictures of
the man, the myth, the

legend!
Tom Wolfe. Rather unexciting literature, if you ask me.

So what is there to learn

intellectually
about the esteemed
writer of
The Bonfire of the Vanities
from this shoddily
scrupulous, Brittanican description of him? Well, not a whole
lot, as one would expect, but it is imperative that we
understand the scholastic and social backgrounds of our
favorite authors so that we can further understand their world
view outside their collared literary spheres of influence.
Also, of course, verifying that an author knows what their
talking about from experience by way of studying their
biography is an easy and reliable way to check the credibility
of their work (and Wolfe checks out in spades).

Kulikowski, Laurie. "Wall Street, Then and Now

."
The Street, 2010. Web.

This page-and-a-half article chronicles the historical

idiosyncrasies of Wall Street, comparing the 2008 version to the
1980s one depicted in
Bonfire
. According to Ms. Kulikowski's report,
Wall Street's cataclysmic decline during the initial Bush era hadn't
damaged much of its vain appeal, which was prevalent.