The Bonfire of the Vanities (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

After Tom Wolfe defined the '60s in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers and the cultural U-turn at the turn of the '80s in The Right Stuff, nobody thought he could ever top himself again. In 1987, when The Bonfire of the Vanities arrived, the literati called Wolfe an "aging enfant terrible."

He wasn't aging; he was growing up. Bonfire's pyrotechnic satire of 1980s New York wasn't just Wolfe's best book, it was the best bestselling fiction debut of the decade, a miraculously realistic study of an unbelievably status-mad society, from the fiery combatants of the South Bronx to the bubbling scum at the top of Wall Street. Sherman McCoy, a farcically arrogant investment banker (dubbed a "Master of the Universe," Wolfe's brilliant metaphorical co-opting of a then-important toy for boys), hits a black guy in the Bronx with his Mercedes and runs--right into a nightmare peopled by vicious mistresses, thin wives like "social x-rays," slime-bag politicos, tabloid hacks, and Dantesque denizens of the "justice" system. If the Coen and Marx brothers together dramatized The Great Gatsby, Wolfe's Bonfire would probably be funnier. Many think his second novel, A Man in Full, is deeper, but Bonfire will never die down.

You might find it interesting to compare the film The Bonfire of the Vanities, a fascinating calamity perpetrated by the geniuses Brian De Palma and Tom Hanks, with The Right Stuff, one of the very best films of the '80s. --Tim Appelo

From Publishers Weekly

In his spellbinding first novel, Wolfe proves that he has the right stuff to write propulsively engrossing fiction. Both his cynical irony and sense of the ridiculous are perfectly suited to his subject: the roiling, corrupt, savage, ethnic melting pot that is New York City. Ranging from the rarefied atmosphere of Park Avenue to the dingy courtrooms of the Bronx, this is a totally credible tale of how the communities uneasily coexist and what happens when they collide. On a clandestine date with his mistress one night, top Wall Street investment banker and snobbish WASP Sherman McCoy misses his turn on the thruway and gets lost in the South Bronx; his Mercedes hits and seriously injures a young black man. The incident is inflated by a manipulative black leader, a district attorney seeking reelection and a sleazy tabloid reporter into a full-blown scandal, a political football and a hokey morality play. Wolfe adroitly swings his focus from one to another of the people involved: the protagonist McCoy; Kramer, the assistant D.A.; two detectivesone Irish, the other Jewish; a slimy, alcoholic British journalist; an outraged judge, etc. He has an infallible, mocking ear for New York voices, rendering with equal precision the defense lawyer's "gedoutdahere," the deliberate bad grammar ("that don't help matters") of the wily "reverend" and the clenched-teeth WASP locution ('howjado"). His reporter's eye has seized every gritty detail of the criminal justice system, and he is also acute in rendering the hierarchy at a society party. He convincingly equates the jungles of Wall Street and the Bronx: in both places men casually use the same four-letter expletives and, no matter what their standing on the social ladder, find that power kindles their lust for nubile young women. Erupting from the first line with noise, color, tension and immediacy, this immensely entertaining novel accurately mirrors a system that has broken down: from the social code of basic good manners to the fair practices of the law. It is safe to predict that the book will stand as a brilliant evocation of New York's class, racial and political structure in the 1980s. 200,000 first printing; $200,000 ad/promo; Literary Guild dual main selection; author tour.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 704 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (November 1, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 033030660X
• ISBN-13: 978-0553275971
• ASIN: 0553275976
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (167 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #242,678 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

79 of 87 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exquisite Moments, February 20, 2001

By	J. Kenney (Richmond, VA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I think that one of the most startling things about this novel is that, for everyone who reads it, there is a different pivotal image, a separate moment in the book which forms an axis for the work. For me, it's Sherman McCoy's phone conversation with his estranged wife, in which he talks about the days when, as he went off to work, he would turn on the street under the window where she was watching, and give the black power sign. It meant, to this white son-of-a-lawyer, that he wasn't going to get sucked into Wall Street, that he was only using it; that it wouldn't change him.

Fast forward a dozen or so years, and Sherman is 38. He's one of New York's leading Bond salesman, a self-titled Master of the Universe who makes a million dollars a year (and that isn't enough), barely sees his wife, and is cheating with another man's gold-digging spouse. As a matter of fact, when we first meet Sherman, the only redeeming feature he has is that he does seem to really love his five-year-old daughter.

Sherman is not the only disgusting character we find as our story opens. There's the mistress, Maria, who laughs at her husband from the confines of her sublet rent-controlled love-nest. The wife is bitchy enough to lose sympathy with the reader despite her husband's philandering. There's the alcoholic tabloid journalist, who is an expert at getting other people to pick up the tab. And there's a thinly veiled reference to the Rev. Al Sharpton, just to complete the picture. When the book opens, the only character with whom the reader can sympathize is Larry, a lawyer who chose to work in the Bronx D.A.'s office because he wants to "make a difference".

And yet, the reader is sucked into the lives of these people. At first it may only be for a tittlating look at how bad bad people can be, but very soon (Wolfe doesn't tease us long) we stay to find out whether our characters will get caught for the crime they have committed; finally, we stay because we have come to admire Sherman McCoy.

It is a testament to Tom Wolfe's abilities that by the end of the novel, we have come to completely different views of most of the characters in this novel. The wife isn't bitchy, she's just dissatisfied with a life that she didn't set out to get. The mistress isn't harmless, she's a viper. The reporter will print any lie to increase the drama of the crime he's uncovering; the lawyer will justify anything to catch his "Great White Defendant".

Sherman begins the book by telling us that he is entitled to his penthouse, his sports car, his mistress, his Saville Row suits. He finishes it standing alone, unable to afford a lawyer and "dressed for jail". But he's standing, and once again, he's raising a fist in the air, determined to overcome.

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast, June 29, 2001

By	James G. Greenhill "Jim Greenhill" (Durango, CO USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Lot of useful reviews here. No one mentions Wolfe's 24-page introduction, 'Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast,' which is excellent in itself as an overview of the alleged death of the novel, The New Journalism, non-fiction v. fiction & his own evolution as a writer. The introduction is worth a read on its own if you're a journalism student, a would-be or actual writer or just interested in the publishing world. As for the rest of the book, it's excellent. Wolfe is a master of the set piece, the extended vignette beautifully observing a situation or person. He is not so good at endings, which is why I picked four stars rather than five. I felt identically about his later "A Man in Full," and it didn't stop me enjoying the heck out of the book. If you enjoy his fiction, his non-fiction is well worth checking out as great examples of very controlled, observant reporting & writing. I particularly enjoyed "From Bauhaus to Our House," an extended essay about modern architecture, and "The Painted Word," ditto on modern art.

26 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Research Vs. Writing, November 18, 2006

By	Mark Eremite "This Is A Display Model Only" (Seoul, South Korea) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Tom Wolfe knows how to do his research. In his earlier, nonfiction works, he demonstrates his capacity to observe and synthesize information from even the most chaotic of situations. This is his first work of fiction, and his critical and all-absorbing eye works overtime; no detail is too small, no element is too minute. This work is saturated with timeless authenticity. It is intricate, impressive, and exhaustive.

Exhausting, too.

I admire the virtuosity of this book -- its scope, ambitions, and insights. But these admirable qualities are subsumed by an avalanche of detail. Wolfe amassed a titanic amount of information about New York in the 80's, and instead of carefully parcelling those tid-bits out in a way to delicately suggest the satire he is aiming for, he decided to include every, single, solitary thing he learned. The story here is secondary to the scenery.

Speaking of story: Sherman McCoy, "Master of the Universe," a Park Avenue bond trader with a massive bank account (and an ego and debt to match) is embroiled in a political whirlwind when he and his mistress are the cause of a possibly fatal accident in the Bronx. McCoy's world is knocked out of whack when he finds himself at the mercy of fame-hungry D.A.s, money-hungry opportunists, power-hungry politicians, and gossip-hungry journalists. It's the story of a world full of fools and blow-hards who spend most of their energy trying to be (or at least appear to be) otherwise.

The satire is acute and on-the-nose, but it also centers around a cast composed entirely of unlikeable characters. Everyone from the naive McCoy to the pompous (and shady) Reverend Bacon, from the hypocritical attorney Kramer to the pickled and brined journalist Fallow: they are well-rounded, mostly believable, and mildly intriguing, but they also reek of their various vices. Because of this, when Wolfe attempts poignancy, it comes across as vacuousness. When the satire tries to be tongue-in-cheek, it is instead elbow-in-rib (and not very subtly, either).

The biggest flaw in the novel is that Wolfe has tried to make far too many points, and he takes too long to make them. He puts his two cents in, but it looks like twenty. The story isn't bad at all, and the turns it takes are certainly entertaining, but it is a wearisome read. When all is said and done, I feel like I have learned more about political in-roads, journalistic deception, and financial loopholes than I have about real people, much less those all-greed, all-Me people of the 80's, at which Wolfe's novel tentatively tries to aim.

Again, this is a flaw of Wolfe's refusal to leave even the tiniest microbe of research out of his writing. A good knowledge of characters and setting is necessary to give a novel a solid pulse, a sense of liveliness, but any real and true pulse is usually hidden just beneath the surface. Wolfe has slashed the skin of his story, revealing its pulse in throbbing torrents. If I may torture the metaphor, he's cut a major artery of the tale in order to show us its life, and what he's done instead is cause his novel to die a slow and laborious death. We watch the book struggle and plod forward, valiantly, but by the end, all we're left with is a twitching mass that still wears a grisly death grin. The ending here is less an ending than it is Wolfe running out of research to employ. The pulse stops there.