When I read James Rosen’s review of my Dispatches from the Late Republic, I panicked a little over the following:
Anton is way off base when he asserts that Wolfe’s creative decision-making was at any point driven by exigent financial needs…. For Wolfe—who never borrowed money—the 1990s were flush: The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) had been a titanic success, and he had, as a matter of public record, sold a brownstone and bought a co-op. It was struggles with plot, not finance, that delayed the publication of A Man in Full (1998). (Emphasis added.)
Now, some of the above is not in doubt. Bonfire was indeed a huge success, selling 800,000 copies in hardcover alone, plus God knows how many in paperback (nearly 40 years later, the book is still in print), and netting Wolfe a $750,000 check for the movie rights. But does that necessarily mean that, for Wolfe, “the 1990s were flush”?
