The Bonfire of the Vanities

This article is about the novel. For the 1990 film, see The Bonfire of the Vanities (film). For the historical event, see Bonfire of the Vanities.

The Bonfire of the Vanities is a 1987 novel by Tom Wolfe. The story is a drama about ambition, racism, class politics, and greed in 1980s New York City and centers on four main characters: bond trader Sherman McCoy, Jewish Assistant District Attorney Larry Kramer, British expatriate journalist Peter Fallow and black politician Rev. Bacon.

The novel was originally a serial in the style of Charles Dickens' writings; it ran in 27 installments in Rolling Stone magazine 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. The title is a reference to a historical event, the Bonfire of the Vanities, which took place in 1497, in Florence, Italy, when the city was under the rule of the Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola. The book's title is a reference to the vanities of New York society of the 1980s.

Plot summary

The plot centers on Sherman McCoy, a young, married multi-millionaire, WASP, bond trader on Wall Street. The McCoys' extravagant partying lifestyle and wasteful spending habits are described in detail. They have an upper East Side apartment, a Hamptons vacation home, and out of vanity will hire a costly limousine to drive them just one block, rather than having friends see them walking or taking a taxi. Sherman's vain wife, Judy, is doing most of the spending. Sherman's life as a self-assumed "Master of The Universe" on Wall Street is destroyed when his mistress, Maria Ruskin, runs over a black youth (Henry Lamb) at night in the Bronx while driving McCoy's car after leaving Kennedy Airport.

Peter Fallow, a washed-up, drunken British journalist for the tabloid City Light, is given the opportunity of a lifetime when he is persuaded to write a series of articles about the case of a young black man who had been the victim of a hit and run by a white driver. Fallow is skeptical as he suspects that he is being used by a local religious and political leader, Reverend Bacon, who is using the case to improve his own political standing among New York's black community. Bacon uses the mother of the now comatose victim of the hit and run to benefit himself politically as a protector of the black community from the supposedly racist white establishment as well as financially through civil lawsuits against the hospital and McCoy.

When McCoy is identified as the owner of the car from the hit and run attack, Fallow begins a biased series of articles that insinuate Sherman McCoy's guilt (a series for which he is ultimately awarded a Pulitzer Prize). McCoy becomes the most hated man in New York City and the focus of relentless attacks from leftist demonstrators. Abe Weiss, a self-absorbed Bronx District Attorney up for re-election, decides that McCoy must be convicted by any means necessary (including obtaining false testimony from Sherman's mistress) so that he can use the conviction of McCoy to sway the black residents of New York City to re-elect him. Assisting him in the process is ADA Larry Kramer who sees this as an opportunity to rise above his mundane personal and professional life as well as to impress his new love interest, Shelly Thomas, who was a juror at a previous trial.

When McCoy's mistress flees the country with another man in order to avoid having to admit to being the real driver, McCoy's private investigator discovers a recording of an incriminating conversation made by the landlord of McCoy and Ruskin's. McCoy uses the tape (which he claims to have recorded himself) to have the initial charges against him dropped. The main narrative of the novel ends with a near riot outside the courtroom in which McCoy loses his temper and almost knocks down several protesters.

In a fictional New York Times article at the end of the book, we learn that Fallow has married the daughter of City Light owner Gerald Steiner, and Maria (the mistress) has escaped prosecution, while Sherman McCoy is penniless and estranged from his wife and daughter as he awaits trial for manslaughter.

Style and content

Bonfire was Tom Wolfe's first novel. Wolfe's works before the novel were mostly non-fiction journalistic articles and books. His earlier short stories included Mauve Gloves & Madmen, and Clutter & Vine, from his book of the same name. His fiction and non-fiction styles have much in common; specifically a fascination with the seemingly fantastic stories and surprising details in American life. Like his previous writing, Bonfire fuses intrigue, plot, and sociological detail.

Wolfe did not intend his work to be a roman a clef; most characters in Bonfire are not fictionalized accounts of real-life figures. 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. The character of Reverend Bacon is not indiscreetly based on the Reverend Al Sharpton. It has also been suggested that the character of Peter Fallow is based on British expatriate journalist Christopher Hitchens. However, Hitchens himself has disputed this, saying that a more likely candidate is the British art critic Anthony Haden-Guest. Additionally, it is likely that Gerald Steiner, the owner of the "City Light", is based on Australian media mogul, Rupert Murdoch.

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.