Gratuitous Literary Observation

Perhaps unwisely, given my current isolation, I've been wallowing in Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities the past couple days. As much a fan of Wolfe as I am, this is actually the very first time I've read this particular novel.

It's been about a year since I last read one of Wolfe's books and I'd forgotten how relentlessly savage he is about things. Think it's a nice, sunny day? Ha! So what? Just means Nemesis has a clearer view and a cleaner shot. Bango! You're doomed, do you hear me? Dooooooooomed!

Coming up for air, as it were, I began to wonder a) if it is even remotely conceivable that Wolfe might write a, er, happy novel, one not so drenched in mockery, cynicism, awfulness and despair, and b) whether such a novel would actually be worth reading.

I put this question to Mom t'other day. Mulling it over, she thought probably not, that the power of the satirist is in tearing things down, not building them up. In her experience, on those occassions when a satirist does undertake to describe the World As He Would Like To See It, it generally turns out to be a place you really wouldn't want to spend any time. (She mentioned an anecdote about some literary criticism aimed at Sinclair Lewis in this respect, but I cannot recall the work to which she was referring.)

Of course, satire is a 'uge field and it comes in many different shapes and intensities, from gentle, good-natured ribbing to outright bellowing from the soapbox. Also many, many authors use satire to one extent or another in their writing without being considered genuine satirists themselves. However, I'm thinking of the capital-S satirists here, starting with Petronius and working right down to modern times. Have any of them ever written non-satirical works as good as their satirical output?

(And before Mrs. P can jump on it with both feet, Mom and I did consider Brideshead Revisited in our talk. Neither of us have anything against it and we know that Mr. Wu considered it the pinnacle of his own writing, but it is the favorite of neither of us.)