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.

Momentous events rocked the 1980's. Ronald Reagan was elected President. The AIDs epidemic was spreading. The Berlin Wall would topple. None of this is visible in this deliciously satirical novel. Saul Steinberg's iconic New Yorker cover “View of the World from 9th Avenue" was published a decade before this book was published. That is the New York that Wolfe captures.

He unleashes an astute assessment of New York's tribal mosaic with cunning wit and subtlety. The terrain of “White Manhattan” is juxtaposed with the Third World frontier land anchored by The Bronx. The obscene excesses of Park Avenue are juxtaposted with the congested “anthill” walk-ups of the upper West Side. Bronx D.A. Abe Weiss, whose political fortunes are governed by the media, is acutely aware of the changing demographics of the Bronx: “In the summertime the Jews used to sit out on the sidewalk at night right over there on the Grand Concourse and just watch the cars go by. You couldn't get Charles Bronson to sit out there now. This is the modern era, and nobody understands it yet. When I was a kid, the Irish ran the Bronx. They ran it for a long time....And now they're finished, and so who runs it? Jews and Italians. But for how long? There's none down the street, and so how long are they gonna be up here in this building?” (p.505)

Wolfe has an ear for speech. He employs that instrument to reflect an expanse of emotions. He opens with New York's mayor's frantic paranoia as he confronts an angry mob of protesters. A gallery of self-absorbed characters follows. Peter Fallow is a parasitic muck-raker exploiting his plummy British voice for social status – and free booze. Larry Kramer, a graduate of Columbia's School of Law, scrupulously cultivates the mannerisms and patois of the homicide cops: “...for the five hundredth time in his career as an assistant district attorney in the Bronx he paid silent homage to that most mysterious and coveted of male attributes, Irish machismo.” (p.296)

Wolfe delights in puncturing the hyper-masculine pretensions of his two main characters. Bond trader and Park Avenue denizen Sherman McCoy silently preens: “...terrific posture...terrific to the point of imperious...as imperious as his daddy, the Lion of Dunning Songet...a full head of sandy-brown hair...a long nose...a prominent chin...He was proud of his chin. The McCoy chin; the Lion had it, too. It was a manly chin, a big round chin such as Yale men used to have in those drawings by Gibson and Leyendecker, an aristocratic chin, if you want to know what Sherman thought...” (p.9)

Here is is depiction of Kramer, envisioning his courtroom image: “He could see it as if the TV screen were already right in front of him...Assistant District Attorney Lawrence N. Kramer...on his feet...his forefinger raised...his massive sternocleidomastoid muscles welling out....” (p.421) Such self-absorbed obsessions are an open invitation to the schadenfreude that swells in the reader.

Wolfe's mastery of broad farce is judiciously displayed. We are introduced to McCoy as he wrestles with his wife's ridiculous pet daschund in the rain. Walking the dog is his pretext for a call to his mistress at a nearby pay phone. All of these efforts collapse when he mistakenly dials his own number and his wife answers.

Names provide a sprinkling of suggestive connotations. A predatory realtor is Mrs. Cuthrote. A wealthy Texan is flattered by the table's camaraderie and thus duped into paying for several large rounds of drinks. His name is Ned Perch – a willing fish for the table. The hapless accident victim is Henry Lamb. A white shoe lawyer works for the law firm Curry, Goad, and Pesterall.

Among Wolfe's most memorable characters is the manipulative Harlem organizer, Reverend Bacon. He effortlessly operates in the world of shell-game high finance and as the Voice of The People. His effusive oratory stymies the pathetic efforts of blue-stocking bagman Edward Fiske III, tasked with recovering $350,000 for his employer, the Episcopal Diocese. The money was meant to establish a daycare center in Harlem. For all his flamboyant oratory, Rev. Bacon deflects Fiske with a blunt truth: “By the time they reached Seventy-ninth Street, securely in White Manhattan, Fiske knew that Bacon was right once more. They weren't investing in a day-care center, were they...They were trying to buy souls. They were trying to tranquilize the righteously angry soul of Harlem.” (p.160)

It would be easy to view this book as an entertaining time capsule. That would be a mistake. Wolfe unearths from a shallow grave the lingering corpses of hypocrisy. Justice, The People, The Working Man are convenient euphemisms. He strikes with deadly accuracy at misogyny, obsessive masculinity, racism, materialism, media spin and social class. The book resonates in so many ways with the contemporary scene.

A literary best seller then was remade as a movie. The UK Sunday Times -->
"The air of New York crackles with an energy that causes the Adrenalin to pump, until one has the illusion that this is where the whole of life is taking place. The feeling is perfectly reproduced in Wolfe's novel, which opens such cans of worms as racial hostility, dress codes, political labelling and the cynical opportunism that governs every action. It's, well, electric"
... perfectly sums up how I feel about this great book! 8 out of 12, Four Stars.

2014 read

"Your self is other people, all the people you're tied to, and it's only a thread."

I prefer Wolfe's The Right Stuff, but this one was okay.

A hilarious and damning indictment of Wall Street, the media, the criminal justice system, and, well, America. Every element of Tom Wolfe’s novel is virtually flawless--an engrossing plot, memorable scenes, a conversational style of writing replete with sardonic wit, themes both overt and subtle... and the characters, ah, the characters.

Wolfe’s talent lies, I think, in his ability to paint such tragic, deeply flawed characters in a comical yet sympathetic light. The characters are written so vividly that they come alive on the page, more like “real people” than most novels. At the center of the novel are three men—Sherman McCoy, unrepentant Wall Street asshole; Peter Fallow, unjustifiably snooty British expatriate journalist and alcoholic extraordinaire; and Larry Kramer, conceited yet insecure assistant district attorney. Even the secondary characters are real and fully fleshed out, especially the scruffy lawyer, Tommy Killian—who, I have to admit, I couldn’t help envisioning as Saul “Better Call Saul” Goodman from Breaking Bad.

The novel’s plot is elegant, like a recipe where multiple and complex ingredients unexpectedly yet inevitably come crashing together to form an entirely new, more complete, more perfect flavor. Even the smallest slices of this story are delicious. Naturally, I have yet to read a dinner party scene in a novel where the very idea of dinner parties themselves--and each of their inane components, including host and attendee alike--weren’t being completely eviscerated, but never has the disembowelment been done so well as in this novel. Nor have I before read such a mirthful and sarcastic description of a funeral. Nor such an effective condemnation people worrying about “what’s in fashion this season”--from desserts to shoes, as if it actually f**cking matters.

And all of this, and more, was felt and experienced viscerally through the characters (even some of whom I despised), making the reading experience seem all the more real. Reading this book, I inhabited in Wolfe’s New York so completely that I felt a real sense of loss as I turned the last page.

Like many of the great masterpieces of the 1980s--Oliver Stone’s Wall Street and Michael Lewis’s Liar’s Poker come to mind--this work is both of its time and yet timeless. It is a world we still live in, perhaps the one we always will: a world of social pretentiousness and superficiality, of classism and unfairness, of luck and injustice, of comedy and tragedy. This is one of the great works of literature of the last quarter of the 20th Century—and it also has the rare virtue of being entertaining as hell. I can’t recommend this one enough.