It's hard to think of a good quality American novel that better captured a Zeitgeist. In this case it was NYC in the 80s. When I read Wolfe's descriptions of the upper class women in their Park Avenue apartments, I see Carolyne Roehm with her tiny upturned nose and giant shoulderpads. Wolfe is writing about several classes of people, but his brilliance comes out with the uppers rather than the lowers or middles. In a snooty restaurant: "Fallow could see cluster after cluster of men with bald heads and women with pineapple-colored hair." The thick description of Park Avenue decor, where the mirrored walls of the 70s have been replaced by apricot silk, and the gleams come from candlelight and expensive lamps and silver tableware, and a florist named Huck Thigg creates centerpieces for dinner parties made of hardened wisteria vines in buttercup meadows, might be the best thing in the novel.

Sherman McCoy is a bond trader, but Wolfe skitters fairly lightly over the details of bonds, high finance, and the machinations of Wall Street. There's a bond called a Giscard, which is tied to currency fluctuations, and Sherman makes some big miscalculations on a Giscard deal, but this plotline has nothing to do with his downfall. (Someone - not me...sorry, I'm busy...-should do a study of fictional treatments of high finance.) Wolfe could have made him some kind of corrupt Madoff, or an inept bumbler like Ken Lay. But he chooses rather to enmesh McCoy in a sticky web of race and class, and make him an accidental persecutor of poor black folk, hounded by an Al Sharpton type (the Reverend Bacon).

Since Bonfire, his first novel, the popular and critical acclaim of his subsequent fiction has dropped precipitously. Obviously, if you're only going to read one Wolfe novel, make this the one.

This is one of those rare novels that was praised by critics and still became a bestseller. The accolades are well deserved. It’s a Dickensian masterpiece.

I only vaguely recall the movie adaptation of this story starring Tom Hanks, and like most viewers I was underwhelmed. Unfortunately, this mediocre movie dampened my enthusiasm for reading the book which is why I’m 40 years late to the party. Since I enjoyed Wolfe’s The Right Stuff and also understand that great novels are often made into lousy films I really should have known better.

Wolfe truly created a literary page-turner here. He brilliantly captures the zeitgeist of the 80s while producing a supremely captivating reading experience. Because of his skill in capturing the voices of real people nearly every passage is interesting or entertaining, and each episode also advances the plot or raises the stakes thus propelling the reader to the next chapter.

I’m going to resist the temptation to launch into an essay about Wolfe’s prescience regarding the rise of identity politics and its pernicious effects. There is an undercurrent of satire throughout the enterprise, and this aspect of the culture is only one of the targets he skewers.

LOVE this book!! Very quick, sharp, & witty. The first Tom Wolfe that I read, & after reading most of his works this remains my favorite. The legal mumbo jumbo piqued my interest, as well as all the wheeling & dealings of the NY police force & how the two are so closely intertwined. I imagine that things don't differ much in the "real" world.

I would suggest this book to ANYONE!! The characters demand your attention almost immediately & it's not long into the book before you are totally invested in the story! Looooved it!! For everyone: read, asap!!

Bonfire of the Vanities is not so much one massive pyre but several large and closely situated camp-fire like conflagrations.

Conflagration 1: Master of the Universe, bond baron and archetypal WASP Sherman McCoy, has reached the top of his particular tree and is enjoying the view from on high while ensuring that his chin is always seen at the right angle. It is nice being at the top of things because well, lets face it, no one wants to be at the bottom. The problem with being at the top of the tree is that there is always someone eager to knock you down. In Sherman's case his particular tree is on Wall Street which means that there is a pack of suited and suspendered wolves baying at the bottom of the tree and even if they can't knock Sherman down themselves, well at least they'll be in line for a tasty treat when he eventually falls. And fall Sherman does. Although admittedly he does aid and abet his own downward trajectory by stepping out on the thinnest possible limb and has an ill-concealed affair with a high class floozy who bangs about more than a barn door in a high wind. Add into the mix a hit-and-run after a wrong turning in the Bronx and it is surely game over Sherman.

Conflagration 2: Hot on his heels, in pursuit of justice for the underdog and a quick lay, is Jewish Assistant D.A Larry Kramer, a man whose ego is a lot bigger and brain is sadly a lot smaller than his sternocleidomastoid muscles. But that is not going to deter him from making a big name for himself in the Bronx. And why should he want to make a name for himself? A pay rise so he can continue to provide for his wife and child? Nope he's all about bagging himself a date with the girl with the brown lipstick (it is little details like this that remind you this book was set in the 1980s). Sadly its a case of non cogito ego sum for Mr Kramer.

Conflagration 3: Pitching in at ringside for the Bronx is Reverend Reginald Bacon, black activist, money spinner and all round voice for the people. He wants many things, among them £350,000 in tax free money from the Episcopalian church which he is in no hurry to return and justice for poor young Henry Lamb, the victim of the hit and run (or more accurately, some careless reversing). Bacon is probably the most canny of all the players and while he doesn't get what he wants, he comes of lightly toasted and not totally roasted.

Completing the racially and economically diverse, self-serving quartet of protagonists is

Conflagration 4: Peter Fallow, the seedy Brit hack who is shallower than a paddling pool. Fallow has lost his literary mojo and allows himself to be manipulated through the coverage of the McCoy case as a way of reinvigorating his career. His all time personal highlight is when Arty Ruskin, aged socialite and man about town dies at the dinner table of a high-end eatery while he's in the process of interviewing him. Shallow Fallow refuses to pay the bill, scoops the death story as an exclusive and outs the staff as heartless bastards who stepped over the dead man to carry on serving exclusive yuppie mini food. Fallows end game is a new blazer and a Pulitzer and he gets both so he's probably the real winner.

The principle characters in this book are all men. The women are either Lemon Tarts (slutty blondes), mistresses (normally a Lemon Tart), gold diggers, Social X-rays (ageing, thinning over-toned skeletons in designer garb who were once Lemon Tarts) or the stay at home, expanded-ass, drab house frau. Ladies, in this respect you may not find a lot to love. On the other hand you can watch the gentlemen make fools of themselves which is fairly good value for money.

On the whole I zipped through this book faster than a yuppie in a Porsche 911 and much like being in a Porsche it was quite a nice ride. Slick, shiny and satisfying. The end was a bit of a cop out though and I am not sure that I approve. If I had to summarise this book, I'd say that this is what American Psycho wants to be when it grows up.

Wow.

This is clearly a top-notch book for its rabblerousing racial-hate mob-inducing polemics that plays to both conservatives and liberals at the same time while convincing me that everyone in New York City during the '80s is some of the most hateful, despicable politics-led morons on the planet. I hated the socialites and I hated the mob of the people led by the nose.

As a whole, this entire book can only be described as the enthusiastic stirring of a huge steaming pot of poo.

Satire? Oh, hell, I guess it is, just so long as us readers look at it like the over-the-top circus of buffoons that it is. Some great writing, of course. This is Tom Wolfe. But I'll ALWAYS love his nonfiction best.

So what's my problem? It's neither the all-out skewering of a wall-street idiot or outright caricatures of the media, judges, lawyers on both sides, or preachers. In fact, since this novel, I've read and watched enough lawyer shows, good ones, mind you, that this book seems rather paltry and lame.

But here's the kicker. This came out before OJ. It's almost like a silly premonition trying to put a rich entitled WASP on a pedestal even if he never gets out from under the heel of "justice". I'd have to make a pretty long case on this, but the outline is pretty clear. They were both farcical and absurd for the same reasons if not for the underlying causes. And yet, the causes are just a flip-side.

Public perception, racial politics, wagon-training justice, and people being people. Out for blood and damn reality. And you know what? I DIDN'T CARE FOR THE MAIN CHARACTERS AT ALL. None of them. Not sympathetic in the slightest. I wanted to see everyone burn. But they didn't.

Instead, we had a three-ring circus of a satire that doesn't go far enough and the subversively-angled conservative arguments playing out in this text are laughable. The liberal caricatures are even worse.

Reading both sides of this just makes me want to puke.

So? It's a modern novel holding a big stick and stirring a big pot of poo.

For some, maybe it's as entertaining as a car wreck. But not me. There are MANY better examples of satire that work so much better.

The Bonfire of the Vanities vividly captures the fear, mistrust and division of New York City in the 1980s. It explores and critiques a wide range of cultural themes, such as loyalty, race and ethnicity, isolation and segmentation, the justice system and the media. The interesting thing about the way these elements are portrayed, is that you are never really sure whose side Wolfe is taking. The novel seems to attack on all sides (the apparent lack of narrow political motive is refreshing), but it does so with a certain level of care and understanding towards its characters and the social positions they represent, so that one often feels simultaneously drawn to and repulsed by them. These characters, while archetypical, are well-formed and believable. With one or two exceptions, the plot seems to develop naturally and logically from the underlying motives of the characters and tensions within the system, rather than from an obvious desire to parody. This is incisive, cynical satire, clearly built upon a deep understanding, affection and empathy for its subjects.

I'm having a hard time rating this one. I've gone back and forth between 2 and 3 stars several times. I can't deny that this is well-written, but it never really got off the ground for me. I think there are a lot of factors to this - the setting (80s New York...meh), the lack of sympathetic characters, the overall plot (upper class bond trader screws up and faces serious legal issues... again, meh) - there's no reason I would ever have picked this up on the basis of the story alone. I was also bothered by something noted by another reviewer - how NOISY this book is. Wolfe insists on writing out and repeating how people laugh, and breathe, and various other things that I just found irritating.

On the other hand, I listened to the audio book read by Joe Barrett, who is rapidly becoming my favorite American reader. He creates just enough variation to tell the difference between a rather large cast of characters, without them sounding ridiculous. And while I didn't find the content riveting, I was at least mildly interested from time to time. Wolfe certainly creates a certain atmosphere in this novel, and can elicit the feelings he intends to with many passages. The racial tensions are vivid and uncomfortable and unfortunately little improved in 30 years.

So basically, if you like books about New York and Wall Street, or have a particular interest in racial tensions in the 80s and beyond, you should at least try Bonfire. Or if you have a strange penchant for onomatopoeia. Otherwise, nearly 700 pages is a big investment for "just ok".

For such a long book, it kept my attention which is near impossible unless my attention is on beer, women, or food. Good book! Simple language, very well written. Easy read. Brutally honest and extremely funny. The artistic merit is apparent in the prose but is not overbearing to the point where the author is navel gazing nor relying on jerking himself off for 20 pages in awe of his own "creative genius". The book captures the ridiculous fashion, architecture, mannerisms, and milieu of the 1980s. It also touches on AIDs and the vernacular of the time. I don't see much depth to the story or philosophy outside of capturing the 80s while telling a straight forward crime story. It is more entertaining of a read then a deep thought-provoking piece of literature, however, as stated; very creative and well written. It does touch on demagogues (e.g. characters Reverend Bacon, Abe Weiss). It also illustrates how a guilty man transforms in to something different and the mental/emotional transformation he goes through (concluding in the end of the book). The book shows how incidences are exploited in the justice system for political gains as well. The last two paragraphs reveal much of the story in the book...(remember "don't" versus "doesn't" while reading those last paragraphs)....The lose of identity is an interesting concept as well ( the clench fist McCoy demonstrates to his wife and that background is a good example). It should be noted that justice was served among the circus and chaos of the book.

Chapter 2 is indeed very funny... or maybe it was 3 or 4 (upon sobering up, I can confirm the "very funny chapter" is in fact Chapter 2, titled Gibraltar. I have confirmed this). "Death New York Style" was also a very funny Chapter 26. Lots of "unpc" language and meany stuff, which I think will trigger many full grown adults lacking a sense of humor to go into a "tizzy of emotion" resulting in adult readers to either wet their pants or find a "safe" zone. This may require months of finger painting for many full grown adults. Others may require playing with puppies to relieve the merciless brutal truth hidden in the depths of this savage book. Either way, psychological damage is inevitable from the words of this book. Local governments should/must be notified to ensure proper bowdlerizing as to flatten any meaning in this book, and life in general, to a singular, non-confrontational, docile, weak point of thought that has been approved and re-approved and pre-approved by the ALL KNOWING "committee". The goal of course is mind numbing docile conformity throughout art, culture, and anything that requires independent thought.

"I don't know how to lie" Chapter 14 was filled with so much anxiety riddled prose I felt like I needed a Xanax afterward. Very well executed, grasping every inch of fear and anxiety along the way.

Will add further quotes...On second thought, fuck that. Read the book you lazy asshole!

This captures 80s New York like nothing else I have ever come across. Captures it and critiques it. Anyone who tells you this isn't a good book isn't worth a damn. They say Wolfe wrote non fiction and fiction equally well. I will be impressed if he can top this, A Man in Full is the next book of his for me

Gran novela que retrata las miserias que se esconden tras la opulencia con que nos llega el estilo de vida americano. No todo es oro, por supuesto. Y Wolfe lo explica de maravilla, con minuciosidad, gracia y alta dosis de sarcasmo. Ejemplo de lo que se llamó “nuevo periodismo”, Tom Wolfe recrea con igual destreza personajes, entornos y circunstancias creando un fresco mantiene su vigencia tras una treintena larga de años. La sociedad tramposa que describe La hoguera de las vanidades, donde no queda títere con cabeza, muestra cuan interesante lectura seria una adaptación a nuestros tiempos de corrupción política y económica.

Entretenido, aunque demasiado largo, lleno de personajes histriónicos en situaciones a menudo escacharrantes y desesperantes por igual. Si la sociedad es esto, que pare el mundo, que me bajo.

When I first read this book I considered it brilliant. It was part of my Top 10 Personal Pantheon for a long time. It was so daring, so edgy. Like Wolfe's finest non-fiction, you felt that he was right there, reporting from the place where everything was happening.

The next time I read this was ten years or so later. It was still good, but it was no longer GREAT.

Last night, I realized that now I kind of hate it. At the time I admired Wolfe for exposing that everyone has ulterior motives, that no one is pure. And now I think back on it and find nothing edgy at all. It's rather reactionary, really. Wolfe couldn't be more conservative if he tried. All the married men either have mistresses or want to. All the wives are absorbed in their children and social standing. Only single ladies are sexy. Everyone is a total cliched bastard. Oh, and the race portrayals are even worse. Mentally I can hear Wolfe grousing about the liberal media when he depicted a victim made into a hardworking, promising student. But isn't his own cliche even more trite with the scary young black man in the urban jungle?

Just thinking about it now makes me shudder. I enjoyed Wolfe's nonfiction enormously, but the older I get, the more clearly his fiction looks awful to me. He wanted to do (I think) something grand and sweeping in the manner of Dickens, showing the lowest and the highest of society. But he's such a cynical writer, than he finds it impossible to empathize with anyone, except perhaps the drunken ex-pat. And unlike Dickens, there's no humanity anywhere. There's a lot of slick cleverness , but really, he might just as well have written "everyone's a phony and everyone sucks" and had done with it.

2/3/10