The Bonfire of the Vanities is a novel written by Tom Wolfe. Released in 1987, it is a satire of 80s New York culture and tells of the misadventures of a group of WASPs.
Characters[]
- Sherman McCoy - an investment banker
- Larry Kramer - a district attorney
- Peter Fallow - a British journalist
rest to be added
Publisher's summary[]
Sherman McCoy, the central figure of Tom Wolfe's first novel, is a young investment banker with a fourteen-room apartment in Manhattan. When he is involved in a freak accident in the Bronx, prosecutors, politicians, the press, the police, the clergy, and assorted hustlers high and low close in on him, licking their chops and giving us a gargantuan helping of the human comedy of New York in the last years of the twentieth century, a city boiling over with racial and ethnic hostilities and burning with the itch to Grab It Now. Wolfe's gallery ranges from Wall Street, where people in their thirties feel like small-fry if they're not yet making a million per, to the real streets, where the aim is lower but the itch is just as virulent.
We see this feverish landscape through the eyes of McCoy's wife and his mistress; the young prosecutor for whom the McCoy case would be the answer to a prayer; the ne'er-do-well British journalist who needs such a case to save his career in America; the street-wise Irish lawyer who becomes McCoy's only ally; and Reverend Bacon of Harlem, a master manipulator of public opinion. Above all, we see what happens when the criminal justice system-gorged with "the chow," as the Bronx prosecutor calls the borough's usual black and Latin felons-considers the prospect of being banded a prime cut like Sherman McCoy of Park Avenue.
See also[]
| Title | Author | Release date | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| A Man in Full | Tom Wolfe | 1998 | A novel by the same author with similar themes |
| The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald | 1925 | A novel with similar themes |
| Vanity Fair | William Makepeace Thackeray | 1847-1848 | A novel with similar themes |
| Rabbit, Run | John Updike | 1960 | A novel with similar themes |