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Fiction. Historical Fiction. HTML: This bitingly hilarious American satire will forever define late twentieth-century New York style. Tom Wolfe's bestselling modern classic tells the story of Sherman McCoy, an elite Wall Street bond trader who has it all: wealth, power, prestige, a Park Avenue apartment, a beautiful wife, and an even more beautiful mistress, until one wrong turn sends Sherman spiraling downward in a humiliating fall from grace. A car accident in the Bronx involving Sherman, his girlfriend, and two young lower-class black men sets a match to the incendiary racial and social tensions of 1980s New York City. Suddenly, Sherman finds himself embroiled in the most brutal, high-profile case of the year, as prosecutors, politicians, the press, the police, the clergy, and assorted hustlers rush in to further their own political and social agendas. With so many egos at stake, the last priority on anyone's mind is truth or justice..… (more)
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On one level, it's an engrossing, fast-paced thriller. Its plot is simple: a Wall Street WASP and another man's trophy wife are having an affair; driving back into NYC from the airport, they get lost in the Bronx, and
Along the way, Wolfe hilariously satirizes just about every one of NYC's human inhabitants, and he's tough on dachshunds, too. Some of the book's chapters are in fact tightly-constructed and nearly-stand-alone farces; for example, witness Wolfe's dissection of a society dinner party in the chapter titled 'The Masque of the Red Death'.
But the real genius of this book is its digging down into the dirty depths of America's soul. Wolfe has expressed quite bluntly his desire to write big, sprawling 'sociological' novels, and this, his first attempt, is an uncanny smash hit.
How many traits and tropes of postmodernist consumerist late-20th-century American culture does Wolfe manage to nail? Allow me to enumerate just a few.
First, almost no one has written more tellingly about the intersection between race relations and the law than Wolfe does here. The behavior of his District Attorney character, who's consumed by his hunt for the 'Great White Defendant' (it's no coincidence he's named Abe) is a remarkable blueprint for what the USA witnessed in the 2006 Duke Lacrosse case, to cite just one very recent example.
Next, Wolfe is spot-on in his recognition of the way in which Celebrity has run roughshod over both Fame and Aristocracy in the western world.
Third, Wolfe is simply the best when it comes to understanding and depicting the ways in which the drive for social status is sublimated and then eventually expressed in American life. The muscles, the money, and the politically-correct self-righteous posing are all mercilessly lampooned.
The most amazing thing about this book is its age. It still reads as fresh and apposite as it did 20 years ago. Wolfe was -- and is -- astonishingly prescient. Let's just hope that he's not right about everything he foresees here.
As with so many great novels, the basic premise is very simple. High flying Wall Street bond dealer Sherman McCoy, scion of one of New York's leading 'WASP' families and self-styled Master of the Universe, is conducting a clandestine affair with Maria, the young, sexy wife of an ageing multi-millionaire. Having told his wife that he has to work late, Sherman collects Maria from the airport but, in a moment of inattention, he finds himself stuck in the wrong lane on the freeway and ends up taking a wrong turning. Instead of heading home to Manhattan, he and Maria find themselves lost in the depths of the Bronx. As they drive around ever more frightening streets, an incident occurs, as a consequence of which a young African American boy is accidentally knocked down by their car. In their panic, they drive away, unaware of the injuries that the boy has suffered, and return to their insulated life within New York's beau monde.
It transpires, however, that the young man, Henry Lamb, has been badly injured. Having called at hospital for treatment of a badly hurt wrist he returns home but subsequently complains of head pains, and subsides into a coma. Through the intervention of a radical activist in the African American community, aided by veteran radicals desperate to find a new cause, a crusade for justice for the stricken boy gathers pace. Gradually the foundation stones of McCoy's existence, that had previously seemed so secure, are pulled away and his enviable lifestyle starts to disintegrate.
In the meantime, Peter Fallow, a particularly odious British journalist who had been struggling to make his way in New York, finds himself being given exclusive after exclusive as the campaigners harness the tabloid press to press their cause. Fallow is a desperate parasite with a rapidly-escalating drink problem (some of the descriptions Wolfe offers of the journalist's morning hangovers are quite astounding), but he gradually finds his fortunes waxing as McCoy's wane.
Wolfe captures the racial tensions and jealousies with a pellucid sharpness that he also directs against the vagaries of the American criminal justice system in which, during a year when the local District Attorney has to seek re-election against an increasingly volatile political landscape, Sherman McCoy becomes the ‘Great White Defendant’, the token box-ticking target for whom every prosecutor has yearned.
As I said at the beginning of this review, there are no heroes in this book. Everyone, except poor Henry Lamb, is seen to be tainted and self-serving to some degree. Sherman McCoy, indeed, emerges as one of the better characters. He recognises that he has, inadvertently, done something dreadful and he acknowledges the hollowness of many aspects of his life as a Master of the Universe, although ultimately he remains unable to summon the strength of spirit to opt for a different lifestyle.
There is a Dickensian acuity of observation throughout, perhaps best exemplified in Wolfe's pillorying of the higher end of the legal profession. Top 'WASP' law firms are given names such as 'Dunning, Sponget and Leach' or 'Curry, Goad and Pesterall', reminiscent of 'Private Eye's parody firm, 'Sue, Grabbit and Runne'.
Simply amazing!
The rest of the story is the entanglements of that crime and many other characters appear: the Black community leader, the political Bronx District Attorney, the attorney in the district attorney's office who is assigned the case, the Bronx police, the husband of Maria, the British tabloid writer who brings the crime to the public, the victim's mother, the second black youth at the scene, Park Avenue socialites, and many other who are affected in one way or another by this single event.
Sherman, however, remains the center of the story. At first thinking of himself as the "Master of the Universe", he comes to the reality that a "liberal is a conservative who has been arrested." Told with humor, cynicism, style, and great writing, almost all the characters seem very believable. (There are a few scenes which stretch the imagination, but all the characters come across as true). I do have to take some issue with Wolfe's use of so many dashes and ellipsis.
The ending is absolutely perfect: a newspaper article that appears a year later. Sherman has become the "professional defendent" as the indictment and trial get more and more bogged down. Some come out on top, others are losers, and the sleazy tabloid writer wins a Pulitzer. Great story.
One of the main problems with the novel is that the characters, all of them, are so excessively one-dimensional and extreme in their viewpoints. There is not one likable character among them. What is worse is that there is not one sympathetic character among them. They are all too arrogant, too caught up in being right, too holier-than-thou to generate any sympathy. You find yourself rooting against them, which means that you change your loyalties every time another character takes over the narrative. This revolving door of emotional responses is exhausting and distracting.
The story itself loses importance in light of the violent responses readers will have to the characters, particularly the main ones. It is difficult to care about Sherman’s downfall when one doesn’t care about Sherman, Peter’s rise when he is so despicable, and so forth. In fact, the only character about whom the readers will care is the poor young man lying in a coma – if only because he is the only one to never say a line of dialogue throughout the entire story.
What makes it worse is the fact that there is not one good humanitarian out of the entire cast. They all have hidden, and not-so-hidden agendas, that dictate their every word and action. While this is not unusual in human nature, it is the extremes which make this behavior so distasteful. The fact that there is not one person in the entire cast who has no agenda is disturbing in its bleak picture Mr. Wolfe is presenting about humanity. Again, realizing that he did this on purpose to further emphasize his point about New York City in the 1980s, too much has happened in the world since then for modern readers to be okay with this.
At the end of the day, it is apparent that the bonfire has died out in The Bonfire of the Vanities. It no longer serves the same purpose it once did as far as the story it has to tell and the commentary it makes. Events like September 11th and other terrorist acts, the #blacklivesmatter movement, the recession and the government bailouts of companies “too big to fail”, and every other event that has rocked the nation since the 1990s make this story of greed and power lose its importance. It is no longer humorous; its messages no longer resonate with readers. We live in a different world, and The Bonfire of the Vanities no longer has its place as social satire within it.
Recommended to me decades (hah!) ago by a friend, and I finally got around to reading it (after much badgering from said friend). He told me this was one of his favourite books ever, which set up some rather high expectations for me. So, did it live up to them?
Well, I won't say it's an
The story itself is a bit like an episode of "Law and Order," and I found myself trying to second-guess what would happen along the same lines I do when I watch that show. I did come to an interesting conclusion half-way through, though - that I didn't really care whether or not the protagonist ended up going to prison for the crime of which he was accused. In truth, he really hadn't done anything that warranted a prison sentence, IMO, but he was such a jerk that I really didn't mind what happened to him one way or another. And I guess we were supposed to have seen the changes he went through because of his ordeal, but I still didn't have a whole lot of sympathy. (M - I'm curious what about the ending you didn't like - the ambiguity? Or the specifics of what did happen? I don't think I liked or disliked the ending - by the time I got that far, I'd already pretty much decided that it really didn't matter to me). Funny thing about this book, though, that I enjoyed it in spite of not having sympathy for the main character. As I said above, that often makes me very grumpy about books; it didn't this time, though, I think because Wolfe did an entertaining job of lampooning the heck out of pretty much everyone - rich, poor, black, white, the boys and the girls - they were all equally ridiculous in pursuit of what they felt they needed and deserved. Mostly money and sex, but power was important to most of them, too. And some of them were just all about having their egos stroked. Very pathetic.
Good book, M. I'm glad to have read it. :)
Oh, and here's a little WTF moment for you . . . apparently Wolfe is George Bush's favourite author. O_o I find that . . . strange. Because I find it hard to believe that someone who grew up with as much privilege and carries as much self-righteousness as GWB could possibly read a book like this and not feel bad about himself, or at least take it personally. Well, maybe he hasn't read this one. I've no idea what the rest of Wolfe's books are like. Maybe Bush read the ones that say nice things about nasty, power-hungry, corrupt old white men. But that was definitely NOT this book.
ETA: Kevin just pointed something out to me which may have relevance. Perhaps Wolfe is George "Sr.'s" favourite author (not George "Jr's") - that would make somewhat more sense to me. Kevin's certain he's right about this, due to the lack of colouring-pages in any of Wolfe's books.
LJ Discussion
Those first pages hooked me. Though released in a serialized format for Rolling Stone magazine over twenty years ago BotV remains relevant by today’s standards. Harlem is far from the idealized bastion that the rest of Manhattan has turned into and Rev. Bacon (as a stand in for Rev. Sharpton) is still crusading against racial injustice (Troy Davis, anyone?).
BotV brings together several elements of New Yorker life. Wall st. bondsmen who proclaim themselves ‘Masters of the Universe’, broke Bronx district attorneys and hard-nosed judges, English news reporters who can’t quite reconcile American life with their own upbringing…and the women that upset the balance in their lives.
First, some complaints, but things that actually did not hinder me from enjoying this book.
The descriptions are often too cumbersome, particularly of the interior decorating, (throwing out all these esoteric terms that only a designer is sure to know)
This sarcasm however, does indeed reflect the salient aspects of 1980's city life in America, complete with politically self-serving DAs, sleazy amoral journalists, and civil rights demagogues, and the novel can rightly claim to be an expose' of the hustlers and opportunists that use the system for their own self-interest. The descriptions and procedures of the judicial system ring horribly true and show it to be the incredibly flawed entity that it is, far removed from it's supposed mandate of justice.
Despite some of the gripes I mentioned above, I gave it five stars because in my eyes it stands as a definitive statement about the dysfunction of American society.
It is hard to say what I found disappointing about it, but what comes most
Tom Wolfe is a good author, there is no doubt about it. I read it and tried to have forebearance for a subject I found distasteful and painful. I wonder if there are other readers who feel the same way as I do.
Same thing goes for Tom Hanks; the same way I am not fond of Tom Hanks as an actor is how I am not fond of Tom Wolfe as a writer. Alright, everyone loves Forrest Gump, but I hate the DaVinci Code movie. I saw a link somewhere to a title called The DaVinci Barcode. I would like to pursue that further. Tom Hanks can act about 1000 times better than I can, but I still do not like him very much. But it does not matter either.
I have been hovering around the idea in the above paragraphs of the old do not shoot the messenger schtick. Of course the degree to which I can get riled up about how bad the main character is, is exactly how good the author has done to highlight an extremely important topic. If he had done a mediocre job, then nobody would get worked up about the topic his talking point. Anybody can yell fire if there is a fire. It only takes one word. But when a city is filled with racial disharmony, maybe it takes a whole book. More than one word. And none of the words in that book are going to make everyone feel comfortable.
So as I said at the beginning, the discomfort felt from reading this book in no way indicates a lack of talent in the writer. Quite the opposite.
Meanwhile, clergyman Reverend Bacon, senses an opportunity to exploit the tragedy for his own financial gain. Assistant DAs attempt to further their own careers, mostly to impress jurors of the opposite sex. And no one really seems to give a damn about the young man hit by the car, saint though he be not.
It's all here, the sleaze, the money, the racial real politik, the greed for more power. This novel is rightly called a portrait of the 1980s, no other work coming close to presenting the foibles so clearly. That it could become such a horrendous film is almost a perfect example of what it speaks to: the soulless corporate pursuit of money and power above all else, damn the consequences. Told in Wolfe's journalistic voice, it reads like a Matt Taibi diatribe from Rolling Stone magazine. Sometimes, when the budget-strapped prosecution is confronted with a defendant of immense wealth, your best strategy is to run out the clock until the defendant's bank accounts are empty. Once the man has no money, no one, not even his own lawyers, want to talk to him anymore. Money talks. Period.
The
Through the intervention of a radical activist in the African American community, aided by veteran radicals desperate to find a new cause, a crusade for justice for the stricken boy gathers pace. Gradually the foundation stones of McCoy's existence, that had previously seemed so secure, are pulled away and his enviable lifestyle starts to disintegrate.
In the meantime Peter Fallow, a particularly odious British journalist who had been struggling to make his way in New York, finds himself being given exclusive after exclusive as the campaigners use the tabloid press to press their cause. Fallow is a desperate parasite with a growing drink problem (some of the descriptions of his hangovers are quite breathtaking), but somehow manages to find his fortunes waxing as McCoy's wane.
Wolfe captures the racial tensions and jealousies with a pellucid sharpness that he also directs against the vagaries of the American criminal justice system in which, in a year in which the local District Attorney has to fight his re-election campaign, McCoy becomes the "Great White Defendant", the target that every prosecutor has dreamt of.
Simply amazing!
Sherman McCoy is the number 1 bond trader in a Wall Street firm. As such, he makes one million dollars a year (and that was in the 1980s). He lives with his wife, Judy, and his young daughter in a three million dollar co-op apartment on Park Avenue. Despite his earnings he struggles to cover all his expenses. He is having an affair with a married woman, Maria Ruskin. One night while driving Maria back from the airport he takes a wrong turn into The Bronx. A typical Manhattanite he does not know how to get out and while driving around aimlessly he becomes the victim of a holdup. He gets out of the car to remove a tire from the ramp and two young black men approach him. While he deals with one Maria gets behind the wheel and calls to Sherman to get into the car. As she drives off she hits the other youth and knocks him down. Sherman and Maria argue about whether to report it but they decide not to do so. The young man suffered a concussion and goes into a coma the next day after telling his mother that he was hit by a Mercedes with a license number starting with B. Thus a legal nightmare starts for Sherman lead by Larry Kramer, an agressive Assistant District Attorney in The Bronx, and aided by English journalist Peter Fallow who works for a NYC tabloid. All three of these men are despicable but Sherman suffers from conscience and inner doubts, unlike the other two, and he comes off the best. The downward spiral of his life that starts with that fateful evening seems more punishment than merited.
Joe Barrett, who narrates the book, does a good job of differentiating the various voices although his Southern accent for Maria didn't seem quite right. The audiobook was an entertainment and I don't know if I would have said that about reading a book of this size.
As much as I enjoyed this though, I cannot forgive Wolfe for one egregious problem with the book - it has no ending. No real ending, at least. It isn't even a cliffhanger or a setup for a sequel that was never written. It just *is*. We never find out how the whole trial turned out.
This was my first Wolfe, but I'd heard he is a gifted prose writer. That is absolutely true. I was trying, over the course of reading this book, to think of how I would describe Wolfe's prose, and the only word I
The fever began to rise again. Suppose something did get in the papers ... even a hint ... How could he ever put the Giscard deal together under a cloud like that? ... He'd be finished! ... finished! ... And even as he quaked with fear of such a catastrophe, he knew he was letting himself wallow in it for a superstitious reason. If you consciously envisioned something that dreadful, then it couldn't possibly take place, could it ... God or Fate would refuse to be anticipated by a mere mortal, wouldn't He ...
Wolfe is also great at writing characters. Every single one of the characters in here, with the exception of some of the people we only see in passing, have their little back stories and quirks. That's one of the reasons this novel is so darn long; it takes a lot of time to draw up as many characters as Wolfe does. The one thing I found with this book, though, is that it was a lot like War and Peace for me, in that I didn't really like any of the characters, and I wasn't really sure who I was supposed to like.
I didn't like Sherman at first, mostly because he seemed like a spoiled rich guy who was cheating on his wife. But, as the story progressed, I grew to feel sort of sorry for him, but all that pity ended near the close of the book.
I started out liking Larry Kramer, but quickly sunk in my eyes for a number of reasons, including cheating on his wife and trying to pad his case to make himself look good. I can't stand when characters are unfaithful to their partners. It bugs me in fiction because it's something that bugs me in real life, so I think that's one of the main reasons I couldn't actually like either Sherman or Larry.
One of the things I found really interesting about this book was that every character of a minority persuasion seemed to be a stereotype. I know Wolfe was going for capturing the milieu of New York in the 1980s, and that atmosphere included a lot of prejudice and racial tension between whites and blacks (Not to mention the racial tension is key to his plot), but I think some readers could easily be turned off by the stereotypical nature of a lot of the characters. Personally, the stereotypical characters just made me really, really frustrated because they were just so... annoying ... that I couldn't stand it when they came into the picture.
The character in particular I'm thinking of is Reverend Bacon. He is a preacher who takes the racial cause into his own hands, often blowing situations and facts out of proportion to get noticed. He leads such a vehement campaign against the Bronx District Attorney because he says that the office (Populated by white men) is ignoring the case (In reality, there's basically no evidence to go on for a really long time) that the DA's office, once they finally get Sherman into custody, holds him up as a whipping boy. Sherman's attorney makes certain deals with one of the assistant DAs -- Deals such as quick processing when Sherman's arrested, which are fairly common from what I know of the law -- but those deals are thrown out the window simply because the DA is up for reelection in a highly minority area and he knows that he must pander to the people. I guess, looking back on it, I could say that it's a combination of Bacon's accusations and the DA's political desires that made me mad. I guess that's what Wolfe was going for the whole time. Hmm...
I have to say, though, that the character that I wanted to throttle the most was Peter Fallow, the British tabloid writer. As a former journalist, I tend to get pretty riled up when I see fictionalized journalists portrayed as muckrakers and people who will do anything to get a scoop. That's not how most honest journalists work. But not Peter. He digs and digs and digs, even showing up at Maria's husband's funeral and pressing her for information on the spot. I just wanted to scream at him, "You're what makes people think journalists are bad!"
I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes a scathing look at the justice system, politics, Wall Street or pretty much anything about New York in the 1980s.
So while you're enjoying an entertaining story, you're also
The story is amusing, and the satire is thick (and deep and wide). The characters (or should I say caricatures) embody steteotypes: loyal-to-a-fault Irish cop,
It's a light read. I'm sure I would have enjoyed it more had I spent the 1980s with big shoulder pads and even bigger hair instead of Strawberry Shortcake and My Little Pony.