Title: Great book marred by a bad ending
Product review: As a person who has loved Wolfe for decades and adored Bonfire of the Vanities, I was looking forward to reading his second work of fiction: Man in Full. The great characters, the multilevel "reversal of fortune" story, and especially the acute cultural observations that we expect from Wolfe are all there. But the ending is a failure. Where the ending of Bonfire was both believable and fulfilling for the reader (man loses all the world but gains his own soul), Man in Full ends with Croker becoming some kind of pagan Jerry Falwell, preaching Zuesian tent revivals all over the south. Am I missing something, or did my revered Man in White run out of steam and throw his plot over the top?
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