Book Review: The Bonfire of the Vanities

The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had no idea what to expect when I began reading this book. I'd heard the title phrase before, but I never saw the movie or heard the plot. It was on my reading list as something to investigate, and then I found a copy in my apartment building's "free books" stash in the laundry room (absolute danger zone for a book addict). What made me finally read it, after leaving it languishing on my shelf of shame for months, were the mentions of Tom Wolfe's other books in the biography of Hunter S. Thompson I read late last year. Much like Thompson, Wolfe apparently wrote several non-fiction books in the spirit of "you had to be there to believe it" experiential journalism. I figured if his titles like "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" and "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby" had impressed Hunter Thompson, his fiction had to be worthwhile.

That suspicion turned out to be accurate, though Wolfe's writing is nothing like Thompson's. I did get the impression of fiction written by someone who was very much used to telling "true" stories - there was no element of fantasy, nothing but absolute could-be-realism. I'm in no way an expert on socio-economic and historical facts from late-80s New York, but Wolfe clearly did extensive research about the legal system and based the rest of the book on what he already knew about the city's racial politics as a journalist.

The story is focused on two men: Sherman McCoy, your typical Yale-educated, born-into-privilege Wall Street investment banker, and Larry Kramer, a shabby but ambitious assistant district attorney in the Bronx with an overdeveloped sense of his own virility. Sherman has been having an affair with a woman named Maria, married to another rich man, and an incident that occurs one night while they are together leads to Sherman being accused of a hit-and-run that put a young black boy from the projects in a coma. Larry is working on the case for the D.A. and finds himself caught up in a media-fueled political frenzy over the black community's perception that the New York cops would give special treatment to a white defendant. The story (both in the media portrayal and in the actual plot of the novel) is complicated by the witnesses to the actual incident, who vary from comatose to convicted crack dealer to Fifth Avenue trophy wife/seductress. The situation is also manipulated by the people using the case to gain power for themselves - the D.A., up for re-election in the Bronx; a corrupt-but-impeccable black activist known as the Reverend; Peter Fallow, an alcoholic reporter for a shitty New York tabloid; and the unnamed Mayor of New York.

Something I found interesting was my reaction to the narration style. I felt, viscerally somehow, that this book was written by a man. It wasn't just because each and every one of the characters who took a turn narrating the story were men, though that was problematic for me. (More on that later.) It was the actual writing style: it had a swagger, a punch, an arrogance, an attitude of pushing forth and self-consciously condemning any sentiment, weakness, or romantic ideas. There are books written by women which use a tough, clipped, no-bullshit voice - whether the narrator is male, female, or alternating between the two, they remain in the mode of exposition and never expand into flights of fanciful language. A good example of this would be Margaret Atwood's speculative trilogy, 'The Handmaid's Tale', 'Oryx and Crake', and 'The Year of the Flood'. Atwood wrote many other books in a more stereotypically female voice, but these three leave a different impression. And yet I never truly lost the idea in the back of my mind that they had been written by a woman. With 'Bonfire', I was constantly reminded of this male presence - it left me feeling grimy, in a way I can't really articulate.

To come back to the issue of female voice in this book: Why did we only get access to Judy, the wronged Park Avenue society wife, through the perspective of her husband, Sherman? Why did we never hear from Maria, the classic Other Woman, Sherman's literal partner in crime (both vehicular and adultery)? There is the briefest of flashes into the mind of Shelly Thomas, Bronx juror and the highly sexualized object of Larry Kramer's attention: after pages of Larry's inner monologue about how impressed Shelly seems with his tales of conquering the courtroom, we get one line informing us that, in fact, Shelly is bored of listening to guys babble about their careers while on dates with her. That one sentence told me more about the situation than the previous chapters, in which Kramer drones on about how sexy Shelly is and how desperate he is to gain her approval.

It told me that, firstly, Shelly is far more intelligent and experienced in the dating pool than Larry is aware - this is far from being the first time she has gone out with men like Larry. Secondly, it completely flips the emotional tone of the scene and positions Larry as an absurd self-absorbed twit who sees only what his ego needs him to see. Obviously, that was Wolfe's intention. The entire book satirizes not only the Park Avenue "Wasps" like Sherman but also the people throughout Manhattan grasping for even the most pathetic strands of mid-level power - within the District Attorney's office of the Bronx, in Larry's case; within a failing tabloid newspaper like the City Light, in Peter Fallow's case. So the inclusion of Shelly's opinion is just one more method of rendering the characters ridiculous in the eyes of the reader. My question is, couldn't Wolfe have done more with this? Wouldn't it have been brilliant to find out what Judy truly thought of her husband - how much she believed of his pathetic attempts to hide his affair, or how she felt about her career as an interior decorator, much-mocked by Sherman? And what about Rhoda, Larry's wife and brand-new mother of their son? He has nothing but disdain for her post-pregnancy body and her lack of what he considers class and sophistication, and the end of the book never does circle around to what might happen to their future relationship while he chases sexy jurors and witnesses. What goes on in her head while she's stuck in their crappy apartment all day with a newborn and a snooty British "baby nurse" hired by her mother? What does she think of her husband posturing in front of the mirror and doing push-ups on the living room floor to maintain his "powerful physique"?

To take this point further, there is only one other instance in the book where one of the male lead characters is humiliated by a woman's perception of him. That woman is Maria, who is clearly a lot smarter than either Sherman or Larry initially believed. Her opinion of Larry, heard by him on a tape-recording, shatters his illusion of his own masculine attractiveness to the women (like Shelly) he's been chasing. For the reader, it's a moment of vindication and cruel celebration of Larry having been put in his place, after spending the entire novel listening to his irritating arrogance. And for me, that moment was far more satisfying than any of the other come-uppances administered to male characters by other males. I wanted to see the women rise up in contempt, step over the prostrate forms of the men crying for their lost self-images, and go about their business.

Despite my assessment about the lack of female voice (it was written in 1987, not 1887 - no excuses there), I did enjoy this book. Satire is a wonderful thing, and I especially liked the "inside" view of how things truly stand in one of the most glamorous and talked-about cities in the world. Wolfe has solidified a universal truth that has been around for centuries: everyone loves to live vicariously through the rich and fabulous, but what they love even more is to watch closely as the rich and fabulous crumble to the ground.