The Bonfire of the Vanities
Sherman McCoy is a self styled Master of the Universe, a bond salesman at Pierce and Pierce who lives in a Park Avenue duplex with a wife, a daughter, and a mistress. One night he takes a wrong turn off the highway with his mistress and hits a young Black man in the Bronx, and the collision detonates the rest of the novel. Tom Wolfe uses that spine to sweep through eighties New York, from Wall Street trading floors to Bronx courtrooms, tabloid newsrooms, and Reverend Bacon's political circus. He writes in his kinetic, italicized prose and turns the city into an opera of race, class, and money. The novel became an emblem of its decade and has grown, if anything, more relevant.
Also by Tom Wolfe
All works by Tom Wolfe →What you might want to know about The Bonfire of the Vanities
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A Wall Street bond trader's life implodes after a wrong turn in the Bronx, in Tom Wolfe's operatic satire of eighties New York.
Yes. Lewis has cited Tom Wolfe as one of his greatest influences and specifically named The Bonfire of the Vanities as an essential novel, both in interviews and in his eulogy essays after Wolfe's death.
The eighties trappings are dated on purpose, but the underlying story about Wall Street, media, and race in New York feels startlingly current to most rereaders.
The Bonfire of the Vanities was written by Tom Wolfe, published in 1987 by Picador.
The Bonfire of the Vanities is 736 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Bonfire of the Vanities takes most readers 11 to 16 hours to finish.
The Bonfire of the Vanities is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.