The Bonfire of the Vanities - Tom Wolfe

   1987; 690 pages.  New Author? : No, but it’s been decades since I read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.  Genres: Contemporary American Fiction; Lawyers and Criminals; Racism.  Overall Rating: 8½*/10.

 

    By any objective assessment, Sherman McCoy has made it bigtime.

 

    He lives in a posh $3-million apartment on Park Avenue in New York City, and by “apartment” we mean a multi-room affair with 12-foot-high ceilings and a separate wing for the servants.

 

    He’s got a 6-year-old daughter who adores him, and a 40-year-old wife, Judy, who fancies herself an interior decorator and is still fairly good-looking for her age, in Sherman's opinion.  He’s the top-performing bond trader for the prestigious firm of Pierce-&-Pierce, drives a big, black, fancy Mercedes-Benz, and thinks of himself as the “Master of the Universe”.

 

    Oh, and he has one more status symbol that many upper crust males of society acquire sooner or later: a mistress.  Maria Ruskin sports a Southern accent, and is sleek, sexy, and dark.  And married.

 

    Sherman’s got it made.  At least, as long as Judy doesn’t find out about Maria.

 

What’s To Like...

    There are three major protagonists in The Bonfire of the Vanities, all of them white, and all of them flawed.  Besides Sherman McCoy and his severe case of white privilege, we follow Larry Kramer, a lowly Assistant District Attorney, Jewish, and scared that he will never amount to anything in his law career.  Rounding out the trio is Peter Fallow, a journalist and alcoholic who works for a NYC-based tabloid newspaper called The City Light.

 

    Tom Wolfe uses these three men to present a view of New York City in the 1980s, when it's suffering from a de facto case of segregation: the minority white “haves”, and the numerically superior “have nots” consisting mostly of blacks and Puerto Ricans. This disparity manifests itself in various ways, and here the author uses racism, anti-Semitism, the almighty dollar, social status, and hatred towards gays to cast a spotlight on the division.

 

    The book’s title refers to a historical event that took place in 1497 Italy, where religious zealots burned objects that they felt contributed to the sin of vanity such as cosmetics, art, and books.  There’s no direct tie-in of that event to the book’s storyline, although I suspect it refers to Sherman being stripped of his  white privilege “vanities”, as he tries in vain to avoid the consequences of an unfortunate event that suddenly threatens his well-to-do lifestyle.

 

    I was impressed that none of the characters here—black or white, Jew or Italian, rich or poor—are entirely good or evil.  Sherman initially wants to do the right thing, but gets talked out if it.  Reverend Bacon commendably wants seeks equal justice for all races, but is not above manipulating events to further that cause.  Bronx District Attorney Abe Weiss might desire to give Sherman preferential treatment, but there’s an election coming up and he needs all the black votes he can get.

 

    The ending is exciting, surprising, and logical.  The epilogue raises more questions than it answers, but that’s not a criticism.  I think Tom Wolfe intended it as a “the fight goes on” message.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Logorrhea (n.) : excessive and often incoherent talkativeness or wordiness.

Others: Empyrean (n.); Orotund (adj.), Paradiddle (n.); Malapert (adj.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.4*/5, based on 4,288 ratings and 531 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.89*/5, based on 77,877 ratings and 3,335 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “Hey, Sherm! Howya doin’?”

    That was what Sherman really detested.  It was bad enough that this man insisted on calling him by his first name.  But to shorten it to Sherm, which no one had ever called him—that was escalating presumptuousness into obnoxiousness.  Sherman could think of nothing he had ever said, no gesture he had ever made, that had given him the invitation or even the opening to become familiar.  Gratuitous familiarity was not the sort of thing you were supposed to mind these days, but Sherman minded it.  It was a form of aggression.  You think that I am your inferior, you Wall Street Wasp with the Yale chin, but I will show you.  (pg. 100)

 

    “Welcome to the legion of the damned . . . now that you’ve been properly devoured by the fruit flies.”

    “The fruit flies?”

    “The press.  I’m amused by all the soul-searching . . . insects do.  ‘Are we too aggressive, too cold-blooded, too heartless?’—as if the press were a rapacious beast, a tiger.  I think they’d like to be thought of as bloodthirsty.  That’s what I call praise by faint damnation.  They’ve got the wrong animal.  In fact, they’re fruit flies.  Once they get the scent, they hover, they swarm.  If you swing your hand at them, they don’t bite it, they dart for cover, and as soon as your head is turned, they’re back again.”  (pg. 578)

 

There was no turning back! Once you had lived in a $2.6 million apartment on Park Avenue—it was impossible to live in a $1 million apartment!  (pg. 143)

    The Bonfire of the Vanities was an instant major bestseller when it came out, but I found a couple of nits to pick.

 

    There’s a lot of cussing, with a definite bias for the f-bomb.  There were 41 instances in the first 50 pages, which extrapolates out to 565 over the entire book.  In fairness, however, Harlem was a gritty neighborhood in the 1980s, and probably still is.  So we can tolerate the swearing for the sake of realism.

 

    The pacing is slow.  The key incident that leads to all of Sherman’s woes doesn’t happen until page 90, so the reader is forced to endure quite a bit of scene-setting at the start.  Several reviewers have pointed out the wordiness of the book, and that it could’ve been shortened substantially.  Sadly, I have to agree.

 

    But I quibble.  The book’s message of white privilege and lip service to civil rights is just as important today as it was 30+ years ago when The Bonfire of the Vanities came out.  The story may be long-winded, but so is the saga of the struggle for equal rights.  Tom Wolfe’s writing skills were sufficient to keep me interested in how it all was going to turn out for Sherman and I’m sure those present-day book-burners (via the banning of select books in schools and public libraries) will seek to have this opus removed from the shelves.

 

    8½ Stars.  The Bonfire of the Vanities was made into a 1990 movie of the same title, starring, among others, Tom Hanks, Morgan Freeman, and Bruce Willis.  The film was a commercial flop, Wikipedia notes it cost $47 million to make, and grossed just over $15 million.  Curiously, I’m presently reading another book that was later made into a film also featuring Bruce Willis, and which garnered him a Golden Raspberry Award for “Worst Actor”.  Stay tuned.