With the Lower Depths

In The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe devotes a single passage to the way historical memory influences a certain kind of modern liberal sensibility. Wolfe’s Bronx assistant district attorney, Kramer, searching his political conscience, stumbles on the word “socialist” in the columns of the Village Voice (an enjoyable touch). And this word prompts a
private rumination:

Kramer had no interest in left-wing politics, and neither did his father. Yet...