The Bonfire of the Vanities

by Tom Wolfe

Hardcover, 659 pages

English language

Published July 15, 1988 by Farrar, Straus Giroux.

ISBN:: 978-0-374-11534-0
OCLC Number:: 1072524381

(21 reviews)

Sherman McCoy, the central figure of Tom Wolfe's first novel, is a young investment banker with a fourteen-room apartment in Manhattan. When he is involved in a freak accident in the Bronx, prosecutors, politicians, the press, the police, the clergy, and assorted hustlers high and low close in on him, licking their chops and giving us a gargantuan helping of the human comedy of New York in the last years of the twentieth century, a city boiling over with racial and ethnic hostilities and burning with the itch to Grab it Now. Wolfe's gallery ranges from Wall Street, where people in their thirties feel like small-fry if they're not yet making a million per, to the real streets, where the aim is lower but the itch is just a virulent.

We see this feverish landscape through the eyes of McCoy's wife and his mistress; the young prosecutor for whom the …

We see this feverish landscape through the eyes of McCoy's wife and his mistress; the young prosecutor for whom the McCoy case would be the answer to a prayer; the ne'er-do-well British journalist who needs such a case to save his career in America; the street-wise Irish lawyer who becomes McCoy's only ally; and Reverend Bacon of Harlem, a master manipulator of public opinion. Above all, we see what happens when the criminal justice system--gorged with "the chow," as the Bronx prosecutor calls the borough's usual black and Latin felons--considers the prospect of being handed a prime cut like Sherman McCoy of Park Avenue.

The Bonfire of the Vanities is a novel, but is is based on the same sort of detailed on-scene reporting as Wolfe's great non-fiction bestsellers, The Right Stuff, Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. And it is every bit as eye-opening in its achievements. It is a big, panoramic story of the metropolis--the kind of fiction strangely absent from our literature in the second half of this century--that reinforces Tom Wolfe's reputation as the foremost chronicler of the way we live in America. (jacket flap)

45 editions

mictter reviewed The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

Review of 'The Bonfire of the Vanities' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Larguísimo novelón que se me ocurrió releer tras ver la adaptación cinematográfica: las aventuras de un tiburón de las finanzas que se topa con el sórdido mundo real tras un confuso incidente en el Bronx.
Horas y horas de puro entretenimiento. Con tanta extensión es fácil encontrar espacio para dar suficiente tratamiento a todos los personajes (menuda galería), y Wolfe lo aprovecha magníficamente, no dejando títere con cabeza. Estructura decimonónica bien aprovechada, aunque tiene esa tendencia americana a pasarse de adjetivos y se advierte el tufillo reaccionario de Wolfe, aunque menos exagerado que en obras posteriores.

perfischer reviewed The bonfire of the vanities by Tom Wolfe

Review of 'The bonfire of the vanities' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Just kicking myself for not reading this earlier - an absolute masterpiece. The ugly decade 1980s boiled down and distilled into a glorious (and very funny), well-written novel. Cannot wait to read it again.

nicknicknicknick reviewed The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

Review of 'The Bonfire of the Vanities' on Goodreads

4 stars

1) ''Sherman resumed his walk toward First Avenue in a state of agitation. It was in the air! It was a wave! Everywhere! Inescapable!...Sex!...There for the taking!...It walked down the street, bold as you please!...It was splashed all over the shops! If you were a young man and halfway alive, what chance did you have?...Technically, he had been unfaithful to his wife. Well, sure...but who could remain monogamous with this, this, this tidal wave of concupiscence rolling across the world? Christ almighty! A Master of the Universe couldn't be a saint, after all...It was unavoidable. For Christ's sake, you can't dodge snowflakes, and this was a blizzard! He had merely been caught at it, that was all, or halfway caught at it. It meant nothing. It had no moral dimension. It was nothing more than getting soaking wet. By the time he reached the cabstand at First and Seventy-ninth, he had just about worked it out in his mind.''

2) ''And in that moment Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later. For the first time he realized that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps, love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that this child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life. And now that boy, that good actor, had grown old and fragile and tired, wearier than ever at the thought of trying to hoise the Protector's armor back onto his shoulders again, now, so far down the line.''

3) '''I got arrested in Montreal last year,' said the Towheaded Tenor with evident satisfaction. 'You probably saw something about that.'
'Well, no...I didn't.'
'You didn't?''
'No---why on earth---what were you arrested for?'
'PEEING ON A TREE!' Haw haw haw haw haw haw haw haw haw haw! 'They don't cotton to it when you pee on their trees at midnight in Montreal, leastways not right outside the hotel!'''

4) '''I'm not the person my wifre married or the father my daughter knows. I'm a different human being. I exist down here now, if you won't be offended by me putting it that way. I'm not an exceptional client of Dershkin, Bellavita, Fishbein & Schlossel. I'm standard issue. Every creature has its habit, and I'm in mine right now. Reade Street and 161st Street and the pens---if I think I'm above it, I'm only kidding myself, and I've stopped kidding myself.'
'Ayyyyy, wait a minute,' said Killian. 'It ain't that bad yet.'
'It's that bad,' said Sherman. 'But I swear to you, I feel better about it now. You know the way they can take a dog, a house pet, like a police dog that's been fed and pampered all its life, and train it to be a vicious watchdog?'
'I've heard of it,' said Killian.
'I've seen it done,' said Quigley. 'I saw it done when I was on the force.'
'Well, then you know the principle,' said Sherman. 'They don't alter that dog's personality with dog biscuits or pills. They chain it up, and they beat it, and they bait it, and they taunt it, and they beat it some more, until it turns and bares its fangs and is ready for the final fight every time it hears a sound.'
'That's true,' said Quigley.
'Well, in that situation dogs are smarter than humans,' said Sherman. 'The dog doesn't cling to the notion that he's a fabulous house pet in some terrific dog show, the way the man does. The dog gets the idea. The dog knows when it's time to turn into an animal and fight.'''

Laura Lemay reviewed The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

Review of 'The Bonfire of the Vanities' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I've been meaning to read this book since...since it came out, I think, and I finally got around to it this week. This is also the only Tom Wolfe I've ever read. It has a really terrific sense of place (New York) and time (1980s), and the characters are very well drawn. I hate to be one of those people who criticizes a book because none of the characters are nice, but oooof, really, there's not a single likable character in the entire thing. On the other hand it is to Wolfe's credit as a writer that even if all the characters are unpleasant I still ended up empathizing with the lead by the end.