Taki
Deciding which of the books I read were my favourites in 1987, is a bit like asking T.S. Eliot which is the cruellest month. There are two books that stick out, rather as my ancestors Plato and Socrates stand out among modern-day Greeks. Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities (to be published in February by Cape, £11.95), his first novel, will do for modern-day New York life what Proust did for the Faubourg Germain. When the Martians finally land and decide to find out where we went wrong, they will read Wolfe, and it will be enough. Wolfe is a master story-teller, a master of description, and a genius in seeing under the masks people nowadays wear at all times. The novel is also a lesson of sorts. There is crime and there is punishment, but also redemption. The characters — some of whom I recognised as friends of mine — come off more real than those Wolfe has written about in his non-fiction books.
The other book was Richard Ellmann's Oscar Wilde (Hamish Hamilton, £15). Although I've read almost everything writ- ten about the great Irishman, Ellmann's even bigger book kept me riveted. What a great man Wilde was, what a genius, and what a great book Ellmann's is.
The most overrated? Even easier. Veil, the Woodward book on the CIA (Simon & Schuster, £14.95). Badly written, it proves that no talent and a forked pen will always work as long as it bashes America.
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