Product Description

One night in the Bronx a millionaire, Sherman McCoy, and his mistress have an accident. The next day a young Black is in hospital in a coma as McCoy heads for disaster. His humiliation is at the centre of a satire on the decaying class, racial and political structure of New York in the 1980s.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11991 in Books
• Published on: 1999-11-12
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 752 pages

Review
This gloriously horrible and readable tale was written in separate episodes for a magazine, which perhaps helps to account for its almost hypnotic hold over the reader: not only a splendid novel, but invaluable historical evidence about the state of modern New York (though perhaps best read, for ease of mind, on a journey somewhere else). Review by JAN MORRIS (Kirkus UK)

Sheer entertainment against a fabulous background, proving that late-blooming first-novelist Wolfe - a superobserver of the social scene (The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers) - has the right stuff for fiction. Undertaken as a serial for Rolling Stone, his magnum opus hits the ball far, far, far out of the park. Son of Park Avenue wealth, Sherman McCoy at 35 is perhaps the greatest bond salesman on Wall Street, and eats only the upper crust. But millionaire Sherman's constant inner cry is that he is "hemorrhaging money." He's also a jerk, ripe for humiliation; and when his humiliation arrives, it is fearsome. Since this is also the story of The Law as it applies to rich and poor, especially to blacks and Hispanics of the Bronx, Wolfe has a field day familiarizing the reader with the politics and legal machinations that take place in the Bronx County Courthouse, a fortress wherein Sherman McCoy becomes known as the Great White Defendant. One evening, married Sherman picks up his $100-million mistress Maria at Kennedy Airport, gets lost bringing her back in his $48,000 Mercedes-Benz, is attacked by two blacks on a ramp in the Bronx. When Maria jumps behind the wheel, one black is hit by the car. Later, he lapses into terminal coma, but not before giving his mother part of Sherman's license plate. This event is hyped absurdly by an alcoholic British reporter for the The City Light (read: Rupert Murdoch's New York Post), the mugger becomes an "honor student," and Sherman becomes the object of vile racist attacks mounted by a charlatan black minister. Chunk by chunk, Sherman loses every footing in his life - but gains his manhood. Meanwhile, Wolfe triumphantly mounts scene after magnificent scene depicting the vanity of human endeavor, with every character measured by his shoes and suits or dresses, his income and expenses, and with his vain desires rising in smoke against settings that would make a Hollywood director's tongue hang out. Often hilarious, and much, much more. (Kirkus Reviews)

Customer Reviews

Brilliantly constructed evocation of time, place and social class
This was a brilliantly constructed "masterpiece", capturing its time and place superbly (as promised on the jacket); it sweeps across the social classes by interweaving the lives of a disparate set of characters all brought to what looks like it will be a final climatic court scene. The author was able to provide sympathetic hooks for each of the characters in the story such that it was difficult to know who to "root for" in what seemed to be the inevitable court showdown. But this is where the book let this reader down. The final few chapters could have brought a memorable book to a crescendo; instead it all fell flat tailing off into a series of footnotes about what happened to the characters after the main story had been told. It was as if the author had become bored with the story, or could not work out how to end it satisfactorily. For this reader this book had parallels with Fielding's Tom Jones - a cracking multi-character narrative brought to the brink; and then tailed off through an author's dis-interest or disinclination to continue in the same style. Maybe the sheer size of both books is the clue.

Race or class?
This is a brilliant book of 80s excess and aspiration mixed with attitudes towards race. Just because a person is rich should they be guilty of racism and just because a person is poor should they be a victim of this. However, this is not the story just the legal case! A great story with real meaning even today twenty years later. A future classic as this social situation aint going anywhere!

Black or white, you're scum
This book destroys the pretence of modern America: a place to make you're dreams come true? a land where anyone can become President? If you're white and live in uptown Manhatten you are a one-dimensional ego-maniac, probably with a God-complex who regards anyone below your social status as vermin. You have no friends, only competitors. If you're black you are on the take, whether committing a car-jacking or white-collar fraud but you're protected by the white politicians desperate for black votes. If you can read you're regarded as some sort of evolutionary miracle.
Tom Wolfe has created a book where no-one comes out alive, the friends of Sherman McCoy, the former Master of the Universe, turn on him, the white DA tries to destroy him and the Reverand Bacon sails on protected by the colour of his skin. This book is a revelation: no heroes, just villains.