The Bonfire of the Vanities is a 1987 novel by Tom Wolfe. The story is a drama about ambition, racism, social class, politics, and greed in 1980s New York City, and centers on three main characters: WASPbond trader Sherman McCoy, Jewish assistant district attorney Larry Kramer, and British expatriate journalist Peter Fallow.
The novel was originally conceived as a serial in the style of Charles Dickens' writings: it ran in 27 installments in Rolling Stone starting in 1984. Wolfe heavily revised it before it was published in book form. The novel was a bestseller and a phenomenal success, even in comparison with Wolfe's other books. It has often been called the quintessential novel of the 1980s,[1] and in 1990 was adapted into a critically maligned film of the same name by Brian De Palma.[2]
Title
The title is a reference to the historical Bonfire of the Vanities, which happened in 1497 in Florence, Italy, when the city was under the sway of the Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola, who ordered the burning of objects that church authorities considered sinful, such as cosmetics, mirrors, books, and art.
Historical background
Wolfe intended his novel to capture the essence of New York City in the 1980s.[3]
Beneath Wall Street's success, the city was a hotbed of racial and cultural tension. The city was polarized by several high-profile incidents of racism, particularly the murders—in white neighborhoods—of two black men: Willie Turks, who was murdered in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn in 1982, and Michael Griffith who was killed in Howard Beach, Queens, in 1986. In another episode that received much attention from the news media, Bernhard Goetz became something of a folk-hero in the city for shooting a group of young black men who tried to rob him in the subway in 1984.[citation needed]
Burton B. Roberts, a Bronx judge known for his no-nonsense, imperious handling of cases in his courtroom, was the model for the character of Myron Kovitsky in the book.[4]
Writing and publication
Wolfe began researching the novel by observing cases at the Manhattan Criminal Court and shadowing members of the Bronx homicide squad. To overcome a case of writer's block, Wolfe wrote to Jann Wenner, editor of Rolling Stone, to propose an idea drawn from Charles Dickens and Thackeray. These Victorian writers, whom Wolfe viewed as his models, had often written their novels in serial installments. Wenner offered Wolfe around $200,000 to serialize his work.[5][6] The deadline pressure gave him the motivation he had hoped for, and from July 1984 to August 1985 each biweekly issue of Rolling Stone contained a new installment. Wolfe was not happy with his "very public first draft,"[7] and thoroughly revised his work. Even Sherman McCoy, the central character of the novel, changed—originally a writer, in the book version he is cast as a bond salesman. (Wolfe came up with the revised occupation after spending a day on the government-bond desk of Salomon Brothers, with many of the traders who later founded the notorious hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management.[8]) Wolfe researched and revised for two years. The Bonfire of the Vanities appeared in 1987. The book was a commercial and critical success, spending weeks on bestseller lists and earning praise from much of the literary establishment on which Wolfe had long heaped scorn.[9]
Plot summary
Sherman McCoy is a successful New York City bond trader. His $3 million Park Avenueco-op apartment, combined with his wife's extravagances and other expenses required to keep up appearances are depleting his great income, or as McCoy calls it, a "hemorrhaging of money." McCoy's secure life as a self-regarded "Master of The Universe" on Wall Street is gradually destroyed when he and his mistress, Maria Ruskin, accidentally enter the Bronx at night while they are driving back to Manhattan from Kennedy Airport. Finding the ramp back to the highway blocked by trash cans and a tire, McCoy exits the car to clear the way. Approached by two black men whom they perceive as predators, McCoy and Ruskin flee. After Ruskin takes the wheel of the car to race away, it fishtails, apparently striking one of the two would-be assailants—a "skinny boy."
Peter Fallow, a has-been, alcoholic journalist for the tabloidCity Light, is given the opportunity of a lifetime when he is persuaded to write a series of articles about Henry Lamb, a black youth who has said he has been the victim of a hit and run by a wealthy white driver. Fallow cynically tolerates the manipulations of Reverend Bacon, a Harlem religious and political leader who sees the hospitalized youth as a projects success story gone wrong. Fallow's articles on the matter ignite protests and media coverage of the Lamb case.
Up for re-election and accused of foot-dragging in the Lamb case, the media-obsessed Bronx County District Attorney Abe Weiss pushes for McCoy's arrest. The evidence includes McCoy's car (which matches the description of the vehicle involved in the alleged hit and run), plus McCoy's evasive response to police questioning. The arrest all but ruins McCoy; distraction at work causes him to flub on finding an investor for a $600 million bond on which he had pegged all his hopes of paying the loan on his home and covering his family costs. While McCoy is reprimanded by his boss for failing to sell the bond, his lawyer, Tommy Killian, calls to tell him of his upcoming arrest, forcing him to admit his legal problems to his boss, who makes him take a leave of absence as a result. McCoy's upper class friends ostracize him, and his wife leaves him and takes their daughter Campbell (McCoy's only source of genuine family love) to live with his parents.
Hoping to impress his boss as well as a former juror, Shelly Thomas, Assistant District Attorney Larry Kramer prosecutes the case, opening with an unsuccessful bid to set McCoy's bail at $250,000. Released on $10,000 bail, McCoy is besieged by demonstrators who are protesting outside his home.
Fallow hears a rumor that Maria Ruskin was at the wheel of McCoy's car when it struck Lamb but has fled the country. Trying to uncover the truth, on the pretense of interviewing the rich and famous, Fallow meets with her husband, Arthur, at an expensive French restaurant. While recounting his life, Arthur has a fatal heart attack, as disturbed patrons and an annoyed maître d'hôtel look on. Maria is forced to return to the United States for his funeral, where McCoy confronts her about being "the only witness." Fallow overhears that she, not McCoy, was driving.
Fallow's write-up of the association between Sherman McCoy and Maria Ruskin prompts Assistant D.A. Kramer to offer her a deal: corroborate the other witness and receive immunity, or be treated as an accomplice. Ruskin recounts this to McCoy while he is wearing a wire. When a private investigator employed by Killian discovers a recording of a conversation that contradicts Ruskin's statement to the grand jury—a recording that was obtained from an illegal voice-activated intercom device installed by the landlord of a rent-controlled apartment as a way to remove tenants—the judge assigned to the case declares her testimony "tainted" and dismisses the case.
Fallow later wins the Pulitzer Prize and marries the daughter of City Light owner Sir Gerald Steiner, while Ruskin has escaped prosecution and remarried. McCoy's first trial ends in a hung jury, split along racial lines. Kramer is removed from the prosecution after it is revealed he was involved with Shelly Thomas in a sexual tryst at the apartment formerly used by Ruskin and McCoy. It is additionally revealed that McCoy has lost a civil trial to the Lamb family and, pending appeal, has a $12 million liability, which has resulted in the freezing of his assets. The all-but-forgotten Henry Lamb succumbs to his injuries from the accident; McCoy, penniless and estranged from his wife and daughter, awaits trial for vehicular manslaughter.
Style and content
Bonfire was Wolfe's first novel. Wolfe's prior works were mostly non-fiction journalistic articles and books. His earlier short stories appeared in his collection Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine.
According to Wolfe, the characters are composites of many individuals and cultural observations. However, some characters were based on real people. Wolfe has acknowledged the character of Tommy Killian is based on New York lawyer Edward Hayes, to whom the book is dedicated.[10] The character of the Reverend Bacon is considered by many to be based on the Reverends Al Sharpton and/or Jesse Jackson, who have both campaigned under the banner of eliminating racism.[11]
In 2007, on the book's 20th anniversary of publication, The New York Times published a retrospective on how the city had changed since Wolfe's novel.[12]
Reception
The book was a major bestseller, and also received strong reviews.[13]The New York Times praised the book, saying it was "a big, bitter, funny, craftily plotted book that grabs you by the lapels and won't let go", but criticized its sometimes superficial characters, saying when "the book is over, there is an odd aftertaste, not entirely pleasant."[14] However, National Review claimed "No one has portrayed New York Society this accurately & devastatingly since Edith Wharton."[15]
In 1990, Bonfire was adapted into a film starring Tom Hanks as Sherman McCoy, Kim Cattrall as his wife Judy, Melanie Griffith as his mistress Maria, and Bruce Willis as journalist (and narrator of the film) Peter Fallow. The screenplay was written by Michael Cristofer. Wolfe was paid $750,000 for the rights. The film was a commercial and critical flop.[17]
An opera adaptation, with music by Stefania de Kenessey and libretto and direction by Michael Bergmann, premiered in New York City on October 9, 2015.[18]
Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr. was an American author and journalist widely known for his association with New Journalism, a style of news writing and journalism developed in the 1960s and 1970s that incorporated literary techniques. Much of Wolfe's work was satirical and centred on the counterculture of the 1960s and issues related to class, social status, and the lifestyles of the economic and intellectual elites of New York City.
Joseph Lincoln Steffens was an American investigative journalist and one of the leading muckrakers of the Progressive Era in the early 20th century. He launched a series of articles in McClure's, called "Tweed Days in St. Louis", that would later be published together in a book titled The Shame of the Cities. He is remembered for investigating corruption in municipal government in American cities and for his leftist values.
A bonfire of the vanities is a burning of objects condemned by religious authorities as occasions of sin. The phrase itself usually refers to the bonfire of 7 February 1497, when supporters of the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola collected and burned thousands of objects such as cosmetics, art, and books in the public square of Florence, Italy, on the occasion of Shrove Tuesday, martedí grasso.
Patrick Bateman is a fictional character created by novelist Bret Easton Ellis. He is the villain protagonist and unreliable narrator of Ellis's 1991 novel American Psycho and is portrayed by Christian Bale in the 2000 film adaptation of the same name.
Liar's Poker is a non-fiction, semi-autobiographical book by Michael Lewis describing the author's experiences as a bond salesman on Wall Street during the late 1980s. First published in 1989, it is considered one of the books that defined Wall Street during the 1980s, along with Bryan Burrough and John Helyar's Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco, and the fictional The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe. The book captures an important period in the history of Wall Street. Two important figures in that history feature prominently in the text, the head of Salomon Brothers' mortgage department Lewis Ranieri and the firm's CEO John Gutfreund.
A Man in Full is the second novel by Tom Wolfe, published on November 12, 1998, by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. It is set primarily in Atlanta, with a significant portion of the story also transpiring in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area.
I Am Charlotte Simmons is a 2004 novel by Tom Wolfe, concerning sexual and status relationships at the fictional Dupont University. Wolfe researched the novel by talking to students at North Carolina, Florida, Penn, Duke, Stanford, and Michigan. Wolfe suggested it depicts the American university today at a fictional college that is "Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Duke, and a few other places all rolled into one."
Solomon "Sol" Wachtler is an American lawyer and Republican politician. He was Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals from 1985 to 1992. Wachtler's most famous quote, made shortly after his appointment as Chief Judge, was that district attorneys could get grand juries to "indict a ham sandwich".
The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby is the title of Tom Wolfe's first collected book of essays, published in 1965. The book is named for one of the stories in the collection that was originally published in Esquire magazine in 1963 under the title "There Goes That Kandy-Kolored (Thphhhhhh!) Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (Rahghhh!) Around the Bend (Brummmmmmmmmmmmmmm)…" Wolfe's essay for Esquire and this, his first book, are frequently hailed as early examples of New Journalism.
Edward Walter Hayes is an American lawyer, journalist, and memoirist. He is known for his role in settling the estate of Andy Warhol and representing several organized crime figures. Tom Wolfe's character Tommy Killian in The Bonfire of the Vanities is based on Hayes. Hayes is often regularly featured on different radio stations, in both Ireland and the USA. Most recently, Hayes was portrayed as a character in the Broadway hit, Lucky Guy, starring Tom Hanks.
The Bonfire of the Vanities is a 1990 American satirical black comedy film directed and produced by Brian De Palma and starring Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Melanie Griffith, Kim Cattrall, and Morgan Freeman. The screenplay, written by Michael Cristofer, was adapted from the bestselling 1987 novel of the same name by Tom Wolfe.
In literature, a serial is a printing or publishing format by which a single larger work, often a work of narrative fiction, is published in smaller, sequential instalments. The instalments are also known as numbers, parts, fascicules or fascicles, and may be released either as separate publications or within sequential issues of a periodical publication, such as a magazine or newspaper.
"Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast" is an essay by Tom Wolfe that appeared in the November 1989 issue of Harper's Magazine criticizing the American literary establishment for retreating from realism.
Fred C. Caruso is an American film producer known for his work on such films as Network and Blue Velvet.
The Painted Word is a 1975 book of art criticism by Tom Wolfe.
From Bauhaus to Our House is a 1981 narrative of Modern architecture, written by Tom Wolfe.
Back to Blood is Tom Wolfe's fourth and final novel, published in 2012 by Little, Brown. The novel, set in Miami, Florida, focuses on the subject of Cuban immigrants there.
Anthony Haden-Guest is a British-American writer, reporter, cartoonist, art critic, poet, and socialite who lives in New York City and London. He is a frequent contributor to major magazines and has had several books published.
Burton Bennett Roberts served as Bronx district attorney before his election as a judge, later serving as the chief administrative judge for the New York Supreme Court in the Bronx until his retirement in 1998 after 25 years on the bench. His no-nonsense manner as a prosecutor and in court made him the model for the character Myron Kovitsky in the 1987 book The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe.
Byron Dobell was an American editor and artist. He is considered "one of the most respected and accomplished editors in New York magazine publishing history," the editor of several popular American magazines, including American Heritage and Esquire. He is credited with helping the early careers of many writers such as Tom Wolfe, David Halberstam and Mario Puzo. In 1998, Dobell was inducted into the American Society of Magazine Editors Hall of Fame.
References
Ragen, Brian Abel (2002), Tom Wolfe: A Critical Companion, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, ISBN0-313-31383-0
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