In 1987, Tom Wolfe appeared on Late Night with David Letterman to promote The Bonfire of the Vanities — and offhandedly coined a term that explains the entire decade. Plutography: the graphic depiction of the acts of the rich. His insight was precise. The magazines dominating the 1980s — Architectural Digest, Town & Country, Connoisseur — weren't really about design or antiques or art history. They were stimulating readers with pictures of how the rich live. The pages got thicker. The paper got creamier and more velvety. You could see the thumbprints of the gardeners on the aucuba leaves. The same mechanism as pornography. Different subject matter. In the 1960s and 70s, flaunting wealth was considered bad form. People wanted it — human nature doesn't change — but showing it was vulgar. By the 1980s, that taboo had collapsed entirely. It became perfectly okay to show what you've got. Wolfe was describing, in real time, the world he had just finished fictionalising. Bonfire of the Vanities is plutography's great novel: a book-length graphic depiction of the acts of the rich, and what happens when that world collides with everything outside it. #TomWolfe #BonfireOfTheVanities #1980s #History #Literature #Journalism - @deadwronghistory1