His novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, spent 56 weeks on the hard-cover best-seller list, and currently leads the paperback list. He pioneered a kind of journalism that was remarkable for its vivid verisimilitude and its unflinching dissection of characters. In a conversation with New York bureau chief Bonnie Angelo, Wolfe predicts that the nation will seek a new moderation in its ways.
Q. Decades are artificial measures, but that's what we use, and you have a flair for defining them. You called the '60s "the whole crazed, obscene, & uproarious, Mammon-faced, drug-soaked, Mau Mau, lust-oozing '60s." The '70s were "the...