About this title: Sherman McCoy is an icon for the superficial life of the wealthy in New York City in the 1980s. His world is shaken by a sudden encounter with unexpected fear and danger when he accidently drives his $50,000 Mercedes into the South Bronx. Wolfe's novel touches on every rung of the social and economic ladder of the times, from inner-city communities, to scavenger-like New York reporters, to the daily grind at an Assistant D. A.'s office, to the highest rungs of the Wall Street bond market. First published in 1987, BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES is Tom Wolfe's first novel.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
"An excellent book, and a very fast read. It could be read two ways, I guess-- some people will read it just for the plot and skim through it quickly on the beach, for example, but there is also a lot beneath the surface for readers to absorb and think about. At its heart, it's a novel about race, class and power, and how those things collide, particularly in New York. This is a particularly good book for New Yorkers to read, because you recognize both geographic and sociological elements that you run into on a daily basis. The style of writing is also interesting in that at various points we get the point of view of one of five or six different characters. Unfortunately, they're pretty much all men, which is a little lopsided. Wolfe also has an unfortunate tendency toward long expository paragraphs in dialogue, which I sometimes I have trouble believing would actually be said in a normal conversation. He also uses ellipses far too often. But all in all, it's an extremely fast-paced read. Despite the number of pages, the action takes place only over the course of a few weeks and you're sucked in immediately, even though you despise some of the characters (the report, Fallow, and the preacher, Bacon, in particular, at least for me). Highly recommended, unless you don't like cynical realism or complicated endings that aren't necessarily satisfying!"
"This novel really is superbly crafted. A book with three anti-heroes - Kramer the Bronx Assistant District Attorney, lowly paid but intoxicated by the power his job gives him over people's life, Fallow the lazy English journalist, and millionaire bond trader Sherman McCoy, who can't quite earn enough to keep up with New York's rich set.
There is a brilliant and menacing undercurrent of racial tension as the Jewish lawyers and Irish policemen battle for political control of the Black and Hispanic population of the Bronx against the demagoguery of Reverend Bacon and his many "grass-root" organisations.
Whilst Henry Lamb the black 'honor student' lies in a coma, Sherman McCoys life is destroyed. The lawyers and journalists are portrayed as parasites, getting rich off the struggle, and the politicians prepared to go to any length to win re-election.
"The story of one man's journey from Master of the Universe to Professional Defendant. Of course it has to be New York. It's funny how 22 years on, in a city that has changed profoundly in a number of ways (Wolfe's descriptions of the squallor and anxiety of a subway ride are definitely curious to my post-Giuliani sanitisation experiences here) the story and the characters are still entirely recognisable.
I liked this a lot, and it certainly wasn't because of the writing, because that concentration of exclamation marks in small passages of text should probably be outlawed. It's the characters, the situations, and the portraits of the minute but fiercely-clung-to divisions and subdivisions of social strata of the city that make this worthwhile. If you've spent time in New York, you'll recognise at least some of them, I imagine. I was particularly fond of the regular assemblage of British expats who get together to complain about the deficiencies of America and Americans, having been guilty of the same thing (albeit in a much more antipodean colonial tone in a far cheaper bar) a few times myself.
Expect to have your opinions and sympathy twisted up and down by all the main characters as the story moves along - no one is spotless here, and no one is quite as irritating as you might have imagined either. You might want to beat Sherman McCoy quite severely for the first hundred pages or so as he goes along, internally monologuing about his status as a Master of the Universe (he's a Wall St Bond trader, and YES, that term is lifted from the He-Man cartoons. Realising that was realising that I would have to like this book, for me) and how this entitles him to be a douchebag. Don't worry, you're supposed to. And that beating? It WILL happen."
"I have to say I don't think I have ever read a novel with such an accurate view of the world. With the exception of little details that dated the novel, I felt like I was seeing (reading?) a snapshot of New York today. Not that it doesn't apply to the rest of the country. If you look at Wolfe's portrayal of the media, the authorities, and race relations and then take a look at your community, you'll see the similarities. As I was taking a quick break from Trollope, it was refreshing to see a novel where characters are neither wholly good nor wholly bad. It's hard to even pass judgement on Sherman by the end. (Although interestingly, the reason I even picked this up is because I kept reading articles that equated the amoral Sherman McCoy with the Wall Street crowd that apparently single-handedly brought the economy crashing down on us. Apparently they over-simplified their reading of the novel in the same way they over-simplified their analysis of the financial crisis.)"
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