The Bonfire of the Vanities

When a former co-worker recommended I read the Bonfire of the Vanities, he said that it is an economist's book because it is a book about systems rather than individuals. I was intrigued, but held back because 1) let's face it, not the top of my list and 2) David Foster Wallace (love of my literary life) wrote a rather scathing essay about Wolfe and his generation of American writers who are sexist, macho, and generally yucky and unenlightened. After having finished the book, both the economist and Wallace are right.

The 1980s New York Wolfe depicts is a segregated city, where rich Wall Streeters never cross paths with (or even think about) the middle class, the working man, the ghetto-fab. While Wolfe's portrayal of each group's milieu is impressive, I found the complete lack of social consciousness (indeed, any kind of empathy or awareness at all) ridiculous. It was the 1980s, not the 16th century, and communications systems were good enough that you would hopefully be able to remember the existence of people outside of your tax bracket.

The motivations of individuals is also fascinating-- on one hand they are shaped entirely by the stimulus their system (class? profession?) offers them; their definition of right and wrong, their wants and needs, priorities and sense of shame are all driven by the groups that they are a part of. On the other hand (thank you DFW), they are also crudely biological. If Wolfe is right, the world is driven by flexing, ego-maniacal men and and their ambitions for sex and money.

So here's my gripe: What the hell happened to the other 50% of the population? The view in this book is so suffused with masculinity that it's entirely unbelievable. Women play an almost archetypal secondary role (sex object, former sex-object, mother) in gender relations that have the development of a James Bond movie or a middle school dance. It seems that in the New York of the 1980s, chicks didn't exist except as decorators, rich wives, and fantasy objects of dudes.

Ultimately, one has to wonder how much of this Tom Wolfe really believes. Is the guy writing as he sees the world? Is he an egoistical maniac who is in search of sex and money? (most signs point to yes). Or did he write a book that is ironically subversive, full of characters that are such caricatures that they are ridiculous and therefore a mockery of the societies to which they belong? There are sassy moments when it seems Wolfe gets it: "in fact, she was thinking about the way Men are in New York. Every time you go out with one, you have to sit there and listen to three hours of My Career first," but I'm inclined to believe he just got lucky. Because when it comes to things alpha males are good at, subtlety and finesse are at the bottom of the list.

This book was good but, as are all Tom Wolfe books, it was long winded and there were too many pages and it could have been cut down drastically. And even though it was too long, the ending seemed as though all those pages don't even tell the whole story.

This book was a refreshing change from the introspective, thoughtful books I'd been reading. It had been a while since a book had me glued to the bed all day, lying on my right side or lying on my left side, with the A/C turned on or with the A/C turned off, wearing my shirt or not wearing my shirt, with the book in hand or without the book in hand, marveling at a particular turn of phrase or dreaming about juicy jugs and loamy loins (a Wolfism). This lengthy novel at 700 pages was a page turner to say the least and this wasn’t because the plot was wildly inventive or the characters were oh-so-adorable. I turned the pages for Wolfe. Oh, bloody Wolfe!


Reading Tom Wolfe’s prose is akin to subjecting your nostrils to heavy grey diesel fumes from the rear end of an ancient goods carrier truck; acidic, overwhelming but also strangely, perversely pleasant if you are inclined towards such guilty pleasures.

He is a lyrical impressionist. He uses unconventional adjectives and innovative phrases which make sense only at the end of a sentence. And then too, not completely. You only have the impression of what he means. A very fertile impression I sowed and watered to reap a colorful picture of 1980s America.

He possesses the elusive qualities of an excellent satirist, that of unsparing, sharp observation. In other words, he is the reigning king of the suave smartasses. He brandishes a sword from his slovenly sheath every time he introduces a character and cuts him into delicious little literary pieces until all that is left behind is the most shameful of desires and the most hideous of hypocrisies. As a result, most of his characters seem like arrogant, selfish little twits at the outset. It is one of Tom Wolfe’s great achievements as an author that by the end of the book, he had me sympathizing with most of them. It’s not their fault they are that way. We are all hypocritical, we are all terrifyingly materialistic. We’re all the tightest of assholes. Our inner worlds are equally fucked up. These are the just the ones he chose to write about, the news-worthy assholes. But it is in no outright cynical vein that he writes about these buggers. He finds them endearing, these cogs and kings scrambling for their own wants, using each other shamelessly. Quid pro quo. The New York spirit of bonhomie.


The Bororo Indians, a primitive trible who live along the Vermelho River in the Amazon jungles of Brazil, believe that there is no such thing as a private self. The Bororos regard the mind as an open cavity, like a cave or a tunnel or an aracade, if you will, in which the entire village dwells and the jungle grows. In 1969 Jose M.R. Delgado, the eminent Spanish brain physiologist, pronounced the Bororos correct. For nearly three millennia, Western philosophers had viewed the self as something unique, something encased inside each person’s skull, so to speak. “Each person is a transitory composite of materials borrowed from the environment.” said Delgado. The important word was transitory, and he was talking not about years but about hours. He cited experiments in which healthy college students lying on well-lit but soundproofed chambers, wearing gloves to reduce the sense of touch and translucent goggles to block out specific sights, began to hallucinate within hours.


This excerpt merely hints at it and the title pretty much screams it out, but The Bonfire Of The Vanities is a lesson in humility, it’s underlying theme being the lack of control we exercise over our lives irrespective of our wealth, intelligence, power or success, its distilled message being “The Man can get to you before you can get your pants on.” It’s an examination of the axes of conflict that run through a society; class, caste, language, religion and gender. Through its characters, it irreverently assesses the different realities we partake of, how our prejudices and our beliefs which no matter how we justify it, are nothing but a product of our station in society. Man is inseparable from his environment, says Wolfe in loud, clear, refreshingly original words.


We have the protagonist: bond trader Sherman McCoy, self-titled Master Of The Universe, star asshole of Pierce and Pierce, an exclusively white Wall Street firm. He is wedged between a Social X Ray wife whom he despises not-so-secretly (he can drop a ball from the top of her head and hit the floor without encountering anything in between) and a Southern Lemon Tart endowed with luscious lips, undulating hips and exuberant breasts. After a clandestine meeting with his Lemon Tart at the airport, he mistakenly drives into the Bronx. Mean kids Pimp Roll down its grimy streets at night and men beat their wives with glorious abandon, certainly not a place for an eminent upstanding citizen like himself to be loitering around after sundown. A stray tire is thrown in the way of his shiny Mercedes and he screeches and skids the car to a halt. A fierce scuffle ensues after two African-American boys slouch suggestively towards their car. As they make their sweet escape from this attempted carjacking (so they think), his mistress runs down one of the boys. None of them bother to inform the police hoping the thing will magically disappear. Of course it doesn’t.

The aftermath is a circus courtroom trial that takes us through the lives and minds of an ensemble cast of characters firmly hitched to the wagon on their individual roads to greater success; a seedy alcoholic journalist Peter Fallow looking for the big scoop to revive his sagging career; a Bronx assistant district attorney with rippling muscles and an inferiority complex Larry Kramer; canny black political leader Reverend Reginald Bacon; all of whom gleefully use this incident to further their own selfish interests. Through these characters, Wolfe writes about a selfish, behind-the-back—badmouthing America obsessed with image. He cuts through the gloss and grime and reveals the petty minds of rich folk, poor folk, White folk, Black folk, Irish folk, Jewish folk, people who say doesn’t, people who say don’t, people who say tawkin’, people who call Sherman Shuhmun, bros who Pimp Roll, people who laugh hack hack hack hack, people who go heh heh heh heh, people who go ho ho ho ho, people who go haw haw haw haw. Ah, but then it's all so funny ain't it? Wolfe certainly makes it seem so.

I really wanted to like this book. I started out that way. The writing style was unique, the setting one I've always been interested in and I like New York City. But I didn't care one whit for any character in this book. By the time they get to the big dinner party halfway through, I detested the players, every single one. Just like at the party where the real estate agent turns away from the bond salesman as a waste of time, I put this book away as a waste of my time. Wish I could finish it but there are so many better books to read.

Got two hundred pages in and didn't care, which isn't even that much of this book!

So many exclamation points and repetition: "Chapter Eight: The Girl With the Brown Lipstick.
He thought about the girl with the brown lipstick. Why was he thinking about the girl with the brown lipstick? Blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah the girl with the brown lipstick."

"Chapter Two: Master of the Universe.
Sherman, the Master of the Universe, picked up the dog's poop in a bag and put it in the trash. Was this a task befitting a Master of the Universe? He hoped his wife understood that he, Master of the Universe—"

Like, dude!! Stop making me read the same phrases over and over! Wouldn't we all love to get paid by the word and just copy and paste our way to fortune!!

Infuriating, exclamation point.

Also, while in what I read of it there were some well-researched journalistic passages about the characters' jobs and daily life, the plot itself is like hammer-over-head RICH + POOR = LESSONS.

The protagonist is a dick. I hope bad things happen to him and I'm sure they will. Because LESSONS are to be LEARNED...

Jesus Christ that was an effort! I have struggled to read this more than any book I can remember. I know it's held in high regard and is considered something of a literary masterpiece but... it's boring. I slogged on and on and it was round about page five hundred before anything of any real interest happened. Okay, the initial event, the car accident was okay but the rest is just padding. Boring padding at that. I had maybe eighty or so pages that were mildly engaging (and lifted it from a single star review) and then it started to drag again. As the end approached, and we were in the courtroom, I thought I was home and dry. But, no. Even after the remarkable events with the judge and the 'people' we are subjected to more facts and figures and financial bits and pieces in the epilogue. And it didn't even end properly.
Do yourself a favour - don't start it.
Sorry if I've offended anyone with my ignorance.

I read this book many years ago, and loved it. I remember it as being very thought-provoking, thinking about how things can progress from a simple, common mistake into something terrible; how someone can do something illegal and terrible, but somewhat understandable. To me, it was a reminder of the sad state of race relations and fear between white and black, and how politics often becomes more important than a crime and its victims. The victim in this case was mostly forgotten, while the politics of white vs black was the star of the show - and I do mean show.

I really don't remember the details of the book, but I do remember more than most books I've read since, so I guess that should add at least one star.

UGH. I hate you, Bonfire of the Vanities. I literally only read this whole stupid pointless book in the hopes that every miserable, boring character would be engulfed in flames on the last page. NO DICE.