SOURCE: “Tom Wolfe's Defense of the New (Old) Social Novel; Or, The Perils of the Great White-Suited Hunter,” in Journal of American Culture, Vol. 14, No. 3, Fall, 1991, pp. 35–41.

In the following essay, Varsava compliments Wolfe on the realism of The Bonfire of the Vanities, but states that the novel doesn't live up to the values of the social-realist novel that Wolfe himself outlined in “Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast.”

Our response to things in life is determined in great measure by our expectations. Knowing whether our dinner is supposed to be a West Texas taco or a Beijing spring roll will get us off to a good start in deciding if our meal is good Texmex fare or passable Chinese. Having served up one profundity to hungry minds, let me turn to the matter at hand. Is Tom Wolfe's “Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast” a taco or Chinese roll? Is it...