note to self: never sell the movie rights to your hit novel

As you know I can tell a painfully long, circuitous story, but I'll skip the lead-in to say this: I finally read "The Devil's Candy: The Bonfire of the Vanities Goes to Hollywood." This has been on my "to-read" list for about a decade. Some people set goals of reading the classics, some of us want to read about $50 million cinematic disasters.

I decided to check out "The Devil's Candy" from the public library and needed help finding the particular title. When the librarian looked it up on the computer, she grimaced a little and said, "Hasn't been active in five years. Don't get your hopes up." Then she found a copy for me.

This is the long part I'm sparing you, after a fashion: Tom Wolfe and the years 1988-1989 have been on my mind in strange ways recently. During that time, I lived in Connecticut, finally read "Bonfire" (I was a latecomer even then) and found that the satire made perfect sense to me.

Not until I lived on the East Coast did I realize how much it controls the national news, although I'm not sure the trials of Joel Steinberg or Bess Myerson got much play in the heartland. I remember so many headlines from that period, and what a crazy place New York City could be.

I think "Bonfire" was a book for its time, and enjoyed it immensely. But the movie really underwhelmed me and the nine other people who saw it.

I really enjoyed "The Devil's Candy" -- it was definitely worth the wait. It was funny and infuriating and insightful about the technical and financial aspects of making a movie. It was so compelling that of course I had to find "Bonfire" on DVD so I could see the opening credits and five-minute tracking shot again. (Mercifully, Melanie Griffith was nowhere to be seen in that portion of the film.)

And the book's references to director Brian dePalma's previous film, "The Untouchables," sent me looking for that DVD again, too. (Mercifully, Andy Garcia appears in this film.)

The biggest lesson I learned from this whole retrospective? Tom Hanks generally does not get good reviews in big literary adaptations.