The Bonfire of the Vanities

I was blown away by the sheer scope and precision of the observation in this book. No part of New York life in the 1980s or the then-iconic finance industry is left unexposed. From the pretensions of the plutocrats to the dishonesty of the activists, this book mercilessly skewers it all.

It’s like being in a pleasantly dimly lit room when someone turns on a bright floodlight, and suddenly, you see all the ugliness and tawdriness of the people and things in it. Not for the weak of heart.

I love energetic and creative writing, and Bonfire of the Vanities is a high-voltage novel in both of those regards.

It’s a classic big-city novel set in New York and deals with both ends of the economic spectrum, from the rich world of high finance in Manhattan to the powerless lives of black young men living in the Bronx. One of the best scenes I’ve ever read was when the main character, Sherman McCoy, gets lost in the Bronx driving his BMW and ends up being accosted. It is the match that lights the ensuing story.

A social satire that perfectly captured the greed and arrogance of the 1980s. Sherman Helmsly is a master of the universe, a rich bond trader with a penthouse in New York, and a randy mistress—until he accidentally runs over a black boy in the Bronx. The result is a political scandal that reaches from the mayor’s office to the tabloids, with many memorable characters and acute parodies of the era. Those who lived in or followed the scandals of the city at the time—from Tawana Brawley to Ivan Boesky—will recognize several real people and stories in this fiction.

Tom Wolfe is the OG of novels about the monied class, ambition, power, and privilege. Set in Manhattan in the 1980’s, Bonfire of the Vanities is a panoramic story that illustrates what happens when a high-society Wall Street banker, a “Master of the Universe,” and his mistress kill a Black teenager in a hit-and-run accident. 

Also richly researched and based on factual equivalents is The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe’s 1987 satirical meditation on the seven deadly sins of greed, envy, gluttony, wrath, sloth, lust, and pride as they inform the lives of a diverse assortment of contemporary New Yorkers, chiefly that of Sherman McCoy, a Big Time bond salesman on Wall Street and self-styled Master of the Universe who, in his extra-marital affair with a beautiful woman, takes a literal wrong turn in his Mercedes and, after being arrested, falls from his condo high on Park Avenue all the way down into… show more.

I read this BIG book many years ago, but it influenced my own writing greatly. Tom Wolfe's scathingly jaundiced view of the workings of Wall Street and the American political scene is an object lesson on how to write with anarchic abandon, yet brilliant satirical and intellectual insight at the same time. Once again I go back to the theme that the best authors always have an ironic eye on their subject and its participants, surveying them and their eccentricities with objectivity and often cynical amusement. If you can keep your readers amused whilst at the same time enthralled, as… show more.

Wolf did an amazing job at describing the type of personality disorder that is all too common on Wall Street. It’s a deeply troubling story in itself, but even more so on a broader scale, where individuals such as Sherman McCoy are ubiquitous in leadership positions, and their behavior rewarded and encouraged. A hard-hitting insight into wealth, privilege, and the people it creates.

Don’t make the mistake of watching the sub-par film based on this novel, with the severely miscast Tom Hanks.