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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 a 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 handed a prime cut like Sherman McCoy of Park Avenue.
The Bonfire of the Vanities is a novel, but is is based on the same sort of detailed on-scene reporting as Wolfe's great non-fiction bestsellers, The Right Stuff, Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. And it is every bit as eye-opening in its achievements. It is a big, panoramic story of the metropolis--the kind of fiction strangely absent from our literature in the second half of this century--that reinforces Tom Wolfe's reputation as the foremost chronicler of the way we live in America.
-jacket flap
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Previews available in: English Dutch French
Subjects
Fiction, Traffic accidents, City and town life, Stockbrokers, Bankers, Littérature américaine, Fiction, legal, New york (n.y.), fiction, American fiction (fictional works by one author), Large type books, Social life and customs, Manners and customs, New York (N.Y.) Social life and customs Fiction, American fiction, Fiction, generalPeople
Sherman McCoyPlaces
New York (State), New York, États-Unis, Manhattan, Bronx, Wall Street, America, Harlem, Park Avenue, GibralterTimes
20e siècleShowing 11 featured editions. View all 57 editions?
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01
The Bonfire of the Vanities
2010, Vintage Books
Paperback
in English
- printing (10)
0099541270 9780099541271
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02
Het vreugdevuur der ijdelheden
2001, Ooievaar
Mass Market Paperback
in Dutch
- Dertiende druk
9057135396 9789057135392
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03
Le Bucher DES Vanites
November 7, 2001, Livre de Poche
Mass Market Paperback
in French
2253053406 9782253053408
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04 |
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05
Het vreugdevuur der ijdelheden
1990, Bert Bakker
Paperback
in Dutch
- Vijfde druk
9035109511 9789035109513
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06
Le bucher des vanites
1988-08, Sylvie Messinger editrice
Paperback
in French
2865831027 9782865831029
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07
The Bonfire of the Vanities
1988-12, Bantam Books
Mass Market Paperback
in English
- Bantam Edition (17)
0553275976 9780553275971
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08
The Bonfire of the Vanities
1988, Farrar, Straus Giroux
Hardcover
in English
- 11th printing
0374115346 9780374115340
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Work Description
The Bonfire of the Vanities is a 1987 satirical 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: WASP bond trader Sherman McCoy, Jewish assistant district attorney Larry Kramer, and British expatriate journalist Peter Fallow.
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Links outside Open Library
- tomwolfe.com/Bonfire
- The Bonfire of the Vanities - Wikipedia
- The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe (theguardian.com)
- Over 30 years later, aspects of Tom Wolfe's New York still linger
- How Tom Wolfe’s ‘The Bonfire of the Vanities’ became a finance phenomenon
- The Bonfire of the Vanities - The Greatest Literature of All Time
- Why I spent three years tracking down the original serialisation of Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities
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- Created October 29, 2008
- 17 revisions
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July 22, 2024 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
April 17, 2024 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
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June 21, 2021 | Edited by Lisa | merge authors |
October 29, 2008 | Created by ImportBot | Imported from University of Toronto MARC record |