Product Description

The Bonfire of the Vanities is a masterpiece, a riotous, exuberant and passionate epic that captures the greed and corruption of eighties New York and examines it under the microscope of Wolfe's famed satiric wit. Sherman McCoy, Wall Street wunderkind, seems to have it all; a salary like a telephone number, a home on Park Avenue, a beautiful wife and child, a mistress, a Mercedes. He is a Master of the Universel But then he gets lost one dark night in the Bronx, and his mercedes hits something. That something turns out to be Henry Lamb, a young black man who is now in a coma; for Sherman meanwhile, everything is about to unravel so fast he will hardly have time to change his thousand dollar suit...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32503 in Books
• Published on: 2002-08-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 752 pages

Review
'One of the funniest, finest and most dramatic American novels of recent times... the most enthralling book l've read in years' EVENING STANDARD

About the Author
Tom Wolfe is the author of such classics as The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and A Man in Full among many other vibrant and opinionated works. One of the chief proponents of the 'new journalism', Wolfe is a cult figure, and a storyteller of Dickensian proportions. A native of Richmond, Virginia, he now lives in New York City.

Customer Reviews

New York, from gutter to social ceiling
Chic New York, a city built on aspiration and embodying a cultural elite who have had to create their elitism in the face of Mammon and cultural diversity. Another New York, an existence built on aspiration and hopes of survival, a daily life embodying a struggle to maintain cultural autonomy, group identity, some form of respect, a New York teeming with diversity and the struggle to get by in the teeth of hatred, racism, poverty, greed, drugs, violence, and the overwhelming desire of the cultural and political elite to sweep the streets clear of the detritus of city life.

New York in the 1980's, like English society in the 19th century, its cultural and economic elite struggling to set themselves apart, to emphasise that they possess 'real' class, that they are not contaminated by overnight riches. New York where the rich compete to be admired, to be seen, to be respected for their style and savoir faire, a city where a designer apartment is de rigueur.

This is a New York in which Kramer, one of Wolfe's characters, can embrace relief when he discovers that he no longer feels inferior to their English nanny. Insecurity is at the root of elitism, whether it is the struggle to remain in the top echelons of society or to survive in the gutter. Adultery can be carried on with discretion, so can drug use. The rich strive to insulate themselves from contact with the lower classes, the detritus strive to insulate themselves from the law and their own deadly rivals.

Tom Wolfe produces a New York of hermetically sealed compartments, exclusive social groupings struggling to preserve themselves from the risk of contamination by others. It's a cultured world, fuelled by the dynamism of Wall Street, yet so different from the barrow-boy culture of Thatcher's London.

Wolfe writes with such pace and easy flow, you find yourself swept up in the dynamic of the narrative as he introduces his cast of characters and weaves them together in a vast plot which has conspiracy theory written all the way through. Wolfe's dialogue is outstanding - he creates three dimensional characters, you can almost hear their words in your eyes, can see them leap alive from the page. You can, in fact, forget the story and simply indulge yourself in enjoying the writing.

The Picador version delivers an incisive introduction by the author which sets the novel ablaze. He dissects the history of the American novel in the 20th century, pointing out that in the second half of the century novelists strove to escape the contamination of realism; they aspired to a more obscure, less accessible style.

However, the real world fought back. Americans have woken up every morning for the last twenty years or more to find their newspapers and television channels exposing scandals, corruption, political intrigue, religious hypocrisy and sexual shenanigans the like of which no author could write without being damned as too fanciful to be credible.

The real world has become like the combined imaginations of a creative writing class on drugs. Novelists seem like boring drudges in comparison. And Wolfe delivers the examples of characters about whom he was writing being pre-empted by real life events - he's had to rewrite because the story has happened already and he'll simply be accused of lifting the idea from the 'Times' or CNN.

Wolfe's world of New York is a vibrant, frustrating, infuriating, cesspit of trivial drama and petty positioning. He demonstrates that the novelist can deliver insights which newspapers and television news cannot. Wolfe explores a world where everyone is striving to feel morally superior, culturally superior, physically superior. He delivers a city about which you can laugh ... and delivers insights which cause you to sit back and reflect on your own vanities, self-satisfaction, and insecurities.

A superb novel by a brilliant writer - dynamic, acerbic, hilarious, tragic, painful ... and universally human.

Bond Buyer Of The Insanities
This is a book that captures the madness of the 80's perfectly and I was totally captivated from the introduction onwards. Even 900 pages later, I wished it would carry on. It could quite easily be subtitled 'How To Earn A Million And Still Be Miserable' and every page is dripping with wit and scathing observations about money, life and politics. A true modern masterpiece and a deep source of wit and wisdom about a society based on the idea of Trickle-Down economics. New York is revealed as a divided society, where those with money live in fear of losing the social insulation, that only money can provide. Along with Martin Amis's Money, one of the best novels of the past twenty years.

Essential reading - all (New York) human life is here!
Set firmly in New York, the scope of this book is in the breadth of characters it embraces. From high-flying brokers on Wall Street to gang-prone black kids in the South Bronx, where the lack of a serious felony on your record is a breath of fresh air for the over-worked DA's office. There is humour among all of the characters. Sherman McCoy is a wonderful curate's egg of a character and you can never decide whether to like or loathe him. You can understand and sympathise with how he gets into his terrible situation, but he is so pathetic in his attempts to extricate himself that you feel you should leave him there to rot. There are also heroes in this story - Maria Ruskin is a piece of work, to coin the vernacular, but unlike Sherman, she's good at deceit and not getting caught. And when the proverbial hits the fan, she weathers the storm in which Sherman wallows. Kovitzky, the judge, is another hero, who is tough as nails, but can empathise with the Bronx low life which comes before him in droves, daily. Then there's Kramer, selfish, constantly feeling sorry for himself and obsessed with his musculature. Wolfe throws all of these characters, and more, together, into a pressure cooker, then turns up the heat to see what happens. The result is riveting.