Bonfire of the Vanities has been described as the book that defined the 80s. You never know how literary reputation will develop. Some authors are very popular in their day and fade out. Some get more popular after they die. We'll see how Wolfe's work fares over time. I have been surprised to note that in obits like this, there was no mention of The Right Stuff or The Painted Word. He's already made a pretty big impact in coining a number of phrases that are in the popular vernacular. You may not even realize he created them. This obit is pretty weak. The NY Times, NPR and The Atlantic wrote much better ones. Here's one: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/books/tom-wolfe-appraisal.html
You can't judge the books by the quality of the movies. Wolfe was not involved in the film version.
It was more a comment on what's popular. He's not exactly a household name and I don't understand why this is the frame of reference for him when he wrote a book more people could identify because it was a popular film and people are more familiar with movies Side note. I saw on Twitter that Russ Meyer may have just randomly given him a credit for writing a movie to help sales. Naturally Tom Wolfe sued the fuck out of him
Wolfe is not a household name like Tom Clancy but that doesn't mean his work was not influential. For example, Wolfe had a penchant for summing up American culture and/or cultural facets in succinct and memorable ways. He described the self-centered focus on self fulfillment of the 70s as the "Me Decade." He also created the understanding of "good ol' boy" we have today in an article he wrote on NASCAR in the early 70s. There are many others. Some of the phrases he coined have become so ingrained, you aren't even aware of it. I read somewhere that Wolfe is quoted 150 times in the Oxford English Dictionary.
It may have embodied a few zip codes. Most of us had no experience whatsoever with loaning private jets to opera singers or taking out million dollar loans so our wives could get our condos in Architectural Digest. If you're an angelino, Less Than Zero is closer to your experience. If you're from neither city, the books that defined the 80s were written by Tom Clancy or Danielle Steele or Stephen King, not Tom Wolfe or Brett Ellis.
Name the book that defines the 90s. 70s. 60s. 50s. I mean, even if you go back a hundred years you're going to fight between Gatsby and Grapes of Wrath. O e of the problems I have with Bonfire of the Vanities is it's advertised as satire, but it’s a deeply aspirational book. There's a very clear desire to be Sherman McCoy in it, only without being an insensitive dick. And fucking hell it hasn't aged well. There's a lot of deeply racist shit in it. Bonfire of the Vanities is the book that defines the assholes that put Rudy Giuliani in power, that destroyed the economy in 2007. It is their anthem. And the fact that the book rewards their basest instincts and prejudices is reason enough to stop celebrating it.
The bad guys are all black or jewish caricatures (shylock bad) while the good guys are all either Irish or midwesterners. The basic drive of the book is "New York is being destroyed by a shitty caricature of Al Sharpton and his negro militia while Ed Koch watches the world burn."
I'm sorry you went through that As a person with direct Chicago ties but who never actually lived I don't think they get enough credit for being not completely terrible about their own sense of self importance as a city. Reminds me of an AA joke about wanting credit for not committing one crime or another