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The Bonfire of the Vanities: A Novel

Tom Wolfe

Wolfe, Tom;

The Bonfire of the Vanities: A Novel

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002, 704 pages

ISBN 1429960566, 9781429960564

topics: |  fiction | usa |


This is definitely towards the top of my all-time fiction list. 

Not because it is a superb portrayal of the New York of the 1990s.  But
because it underlines the violence of the racism that goes on today,
worldwide.  The masters of the Universe mentality is the indoctrination
that fuels terrorsim today. 

The story is continuing all around us, as politically stronger groups
worldwide prevent the weak from growing.  It is not a tale of "steam
control" among the blacks of Harlem - it is also the story of the
Palestinians caged up in 30 feet walls, Santhals robbed of their livelihood
by traders, the dirt-poor shack-blacks of We Need New Names by 
NoViolet Bulawayo (2013) and a hundred other disenfranchised populations.

In his Violence: six sideways reflections
Slavoj Zizek ruminates on how such the violence of the upper classes
turns invisible as society accepts it as the norm.  It becomes "like the
notorious 'dark matter' of physics".

In the post-9/11 world, the book has taken on additional relevance:

	Deborah Eisenberg embraces the notion of September 11th as a bonfire
	of the vanities. The story is an acerbic parable about a group of
	spoiled young people living beyond their means in a borrowed loft in
	downtown Manhattan. Their expensive view turns into a curse, however,
	when it forces them to see too much: “the planes struck, tearing
	through the curtain of that blue September morning, exposing the dark
	world that lay right behind it, of populations ruthlessly exploited,
	inflamed with hatred, and tired of waiting for change to happen by.” 
		- http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/9-11-american-fiction-literature-terrorism

A few liberal voices have taken an interesting view of the novel's success
among the general population of white Americans in the 1990s : 

Ronald L. Kuby, former partner of the radical lawyer William Kunstler
[model for Al Vogel in the book], said in a NYT interview:

	It struck a chord with white people when it came out, because white
	people in New York very much wanted to see themselves as victims
	rather than perpetrators. Usually perpetrators want to see themselves
	as misunderstood victims. But seldom do they have a writer of the
	caliber of Tom Wolfe to give them that voice.

	In 1987, the white-dominated criminal justice system was engaged in
	wholesale discrimination against black people — discrimination in
	virtually every form, from police brutality on the streets to
	disparate prosecutions to disparate sentences for African-American
	defendants. ...

	“Bonfire of the Vanities” ... managed to create a fantasy criminal
	justice system where rich, white Sherman McCoy is being railroaded by
	a combination of craven black leaders and corrupt journalists and
	spineless political leaders. That was white people’s fantasy, that
	was not black people’s reality. It was a fundamentally racist novel
	appealing to the very worst in white people, at their most privileged
	and snivelly.


Excerpts

chapter 1 : The Master of the Universe


At that very moment, in the very sort of Park Avenue co-op apartment that so
obsessed the Mayor ... twelve-foot ceilings ... two wings, one for the white
Anglo-Saxon Protestants who own the place and one for the help ... Sherman
McCoy was kneeling in his front hall trying to put a leash on a
dachshund. 

The floor was a deep green marble, and it went on and on. It led to a
fivefoot- wide walnut staircase that swept up in a sumptuous curve to the
floor above. It was the sort of apartment the mere thought of which ignites
flames of greed and covetousness under people all over New York and, for that
matter, all over the world. But Sherman burned only with the urge to get out
of this fabulous spread of his for thirty minutes.

Still young ... thirty-eight years old ... tall ... almost six-one
... terrific posture ... terrific to the point of imperious ... as imperious
as his daddy, the Lion of Dunning Sponget ... a full head of sandy-brown hair
... a long nose ... a prominent chin ... He was proud of his chin. The McCoy
chin; the Lion had it, too. It was a manly chin, a big round chin such as
Yale men used to have in those drawings by Gibson and Leyendecker, an
aristocratic chin, if you want to know what Sherman thought. He was a Yale
man himself.

Today good-looking ... Tomorrow they'll be talking about what a handsome
woman she is.

Masters of the Universe : Unusually vulgar

The Masters of the Universe were a set of lurid, rapacious plastic dolls that
his otherwise perfect daughter liked to play with. They looked like Norse
gods who lifted weights, and they had names such as Dracon, Ahor, Mangelred,
and Blutong. They were unusually vulgar, even for plastic toys. 

Yet one fine day, in a fit of euphoria, after he had picked up the telephone
and taken an order for zero-coupon bonds that had brought him a $50,000
commission, just like that, this very phrase had bubbled up into his
brain. On Wall Street he and a few others— how many? —three hundred, four
hundred, five hundred?— had become precisely that ... Masters of the
Universe. There was ... no limit whatsoever! Naturally he had never so much
as whispered this phrase to a living soul. He was no fool. Yet he couldn't
get it out of his head.

Browning looked Sherman and his country outfit and the dog up and down and
said, without a trace of a smile, "Hello, Sherman."

"Hello, Sherman" was on the end of a ten-foot pole and in a mere four
syllables conveyed the message: "You and your clothes and your animal are
letting down our new mahoganypaneled elevator."

He was only forty but had looked fifty for the past twenty years.

Sherman had known him ever since they were boys at the Buckley
School. Browning had been a fat, hearty, overbearing junior snob who at the
age of nine knew how to get across the astonishing news that McCoy was a hick
name (and a hick family), as in Hatfields and McCoys, whereas he, Browning,
was a true Knickerbocker. He used to call Sherman "Sherman McCoy the
Mountain Boy."

Pay Phone

He picks up the telephone and cradles it between his shoulder and his ear and
fishes around in his pocket for a quarter and drops it in the slot and
dials. v Three rings, and a woman's voice: "Hello?"

But it was not Maria's voice. He figured it must be her friend Germaine, the
one she sublet the apartment from. So he said: "May I speak to Maria,
please?"

The woman said: "Sherman? Is that you?"

Christ! It's Judy! He's dialed his own apartment! 

The staircase of the town house sagged and groaned as Sherman walked up. On
each floor a single bare 22-watt circular fluorescent tube, known as the
Landlord's Halo, radiated a feeble tubercular-blue glow upon the walls, which
were Rental Unit Green. Sherman passed apartment doors with innumerable
locks, one above the other in drunken columns.  There were anti-pliers covers
over the locks and anti-jimmy irons over the jambs and anti-push-in screens
over the door panels.

How bohemian! How ... real this place
was! How absolutely right for these moments

"Well, if you're already in trouble, and you haven't even done anything,
then you might as well do something, since it's all the same difference."

Then she touched him.

King Priapus, he who had been scared to death, now rose up from the dead.

Sprawled on the bed, Sherman caught a glimpse of the
dachshund. The beast had gotten up off the rug and had walked
over to the bed and was looking up at them and switching his
tail.

Christ! Was there by any chance some way a dog could indicate . . . Was there
anything dogs did that showed they had seen . . . Judy knew about
animals. She clucked and fussed over Marshall's every mood, until it was
revolting. Was there something dachshunds did after observing . . . But then
his nervous system began to dissolve, and he no longer cared.  

His Majesty, the most ancient king, Priapus, Master of the Universe, had no
conscience.

---

But what was he worrying about? He wasn't driving the car when it happened—if
it happened. Right! If it happened.

He hadn't seen the boy get hit, and she hadn't, either, and besides, it was
in the heat of a fight for their very lives—and she was driving, in any
case. If she didn't want to report it, that was her business.

He stopped and took a breath and looked around. Yes; White Manhattan, the
sanctuary of the East Seventies.

He had fought his way out of an ambush on the nightmare terrain, and he had
prevailed. He had saved a woman. The time had come to act like a man, and he
had acted and prevailed. He was not merely a Master of the Universe; he was
more; he was a man.


Judge Kovitsky and Herbert 92X


[D.A. Larry Kramer in Judge Kovitsky's courtroom. ]

Judge Kovitsky: We happen to live in a republic, and in this republic there
is a separation of church and state. Do you understand? And this court is
governed by the laws of that republic, which are embodied in the Constitution
of the United States."

Herbert 92X : "That's not true!"

"What's not true, Mr. 92X?"

"The separation of church and state. And I can prove it."

"Whaddaya talking about, Mr. 92X?"

"Turn around! Look up on the wall!" Herbert was on his
feet again, pointing at the wall up above Kovitsky's head.
Kovitsky swiveled about in his chair and looked up. Sure
enough, incised in the wood paneling were the words in god we
trust.

"Church and state!" Herbert cried triumphantly. "You got
it carved in the wall over your head!"


Larry Kramer : 

"There's this kid, Henry Lamb, L-A-M-B, eighteen years
old, and he's in the intensive-care unit. He came in here last
night with a broken wrist. Okay? When he came in here, at least
from what's on this sheet of paper, he didn't say nothing about
getting hit by a car. It just says he fell. Okay? So they fixed up
the broken wrist in the emergency room, and they sent him
home. This morning the kid's mother, she brings him back in
here, and he's got a concussion, and he goes into a coma, and
now they classify him as a likely-to-die. Okay?"

"Yeah."

"The kid was in the coma by the time they called us, but
there's this nurse here that says he told his mother he was hit by
a car, a Mercedes, and the car left the scene, and he got a partial
license number."

"Any witnesses?"

"No. This is all from the nurse. We can't even find the mother."

"The kid was in the coma by the time they called us, but there's this nurse
here that says he told his mother he was hit by a car, a Mercedes, and the
car left the scene, and he got a partial license number."

this nurse is all excited and breaking my balls about a hit-and-run.

---


There it was, the Rome, the Paris, the London of the twentieth century, the
city of ambition, the dense magnetic rock, the irresistible destination of
all those who insist on being where things are happening—and he was among the
victors! He lived on Park Avenue, the street of dreams! He worked on Wall
Street, fifty floors up, for the legendary Pierce & Pierce, overlooking the
world! He was at the wheel of a $48,000 roadster with one of the most
beautiful women in New York—no Comp. Lit. scholar, perhaps, but
gorgeous—beside him! A frisky young animal! He was of that breed whose
natural destiny it was…to have what they wanted!  p.71


day-care centers are desperately needed in Harlem


"So I don't know exactly how to put it, Reverend Bacon, but the thing is,
we—I mean the diocese—the Episcopal Church— we've given you $350,000 as seed
money for the Little Shepherd Day Care Center, and we received a telephone
call yesterday from a newspaper reporter, and he said the Human Resources
Administration turned down your license application nine weeks ago, and I
mean, well, we just couldn't believe it. It was the first thing we'd even
heard about it, and so . . ."

Fiske: "We gave you $350,000 contingent on the licensing of the day-care
center. So if you'll turn over the $350,000 or the $340,000, whatever the
exact balance is, and let us put it into an escrow account, then we'll help
you. We'll go to bat for you." 138

Reverend Bacon looked at him distractedly, as if pondering a great decision.

"That money is mostly ... committed."

"If you don't mind, how much of the money remains in your hands, Reverend
Bacon, whether committed or not?"

"None of it," said Reverend Bacon.

"None of it? How can that be?"

"This was seed money. We had to sow the seed. Some of it fell on fallow
ground."

"The diocese will — there'll have to be an audit," said Fiske.  "Right
away."p.140

"Oh yes," said Reverend Bacon. "There'll be an audit. I'll give you an
audit. . . right away. I'm gonna tell you something.  I'm gonna tell you
something about capitalism north of Ninetysixth Street. Why do you people
think you're investing all this money, your $350,000, in a day-care center in
Harlem? Why are you?"

Fiske said nothing. Reverend Bacon's Socratic dialogues made him feel
childish and helpless.

But Bacon insisted. "Now, you go ahead and tell me. I want to hear it from
you. Like you say, we're going to have an audit.  An audit. I want to hear it
from you in your own words. Why are you people investing all this money in a
day-care center in Harlem? Why?"

Fiske couldn't hold out any longer. "Because day-care centers are desperately
needed in Harlem," he said, feeling about six years old.

Bacon's Theory of Steam Control


"No, my friend," said Bacon softly, "that is not why. If you people were that
worried about the children, you would build the day-care center yourself and
hire the best professional people to work in it, people with experience. You
wouldn't even talk about hiring the people of the streets. What do the people
of the streets know about running a day-care center? No, my friend, you're
investing in something else. You're investing in steam control. And you're
getting value for money. Value for money."

"Steam control?"

"Steam control. It's a capital investment. It's a very good one. You know
what capital is? You think it's something you own, don't you. You think it's
factories and machines and buildings and land and things you can sell and
stocks and money and banks and corporations. You think it's something you
own, because you always owned it. You owned all this land." He waved his arm
back toward the bay window and the gloomy back yard and the three sycamore
trees. "You owned all the land, and out there, out there in ... Kansas
... and ...  Oklahoma ... everybody just lined up, and they said, 'On
the mark, get set, go!' and a whole lot of white people started running, and
there was all this land, and all they had to do was get to it and stand on
it, and they owned it, and their white skin was their deed of property
... see ...

The red man, he was in the way, and he was eliminated.  The yellow man, he
could lay rails across it, but then he was shut up in Chinatown. And the
black man, he was in chains the whole time anyway. And so you owned it all,
and you still own it, and so you think capital is owning things.

But you are mistaken. Capital is controlling things. Controlling things. You
want land in Kansas? You want to exercise your white deed of property? First
you got to control Kansas ... see ... Controlling things. I don't suppose you
ever worked in a boiler room. I worked in a boiler room. People own the
boilers, but that don't do 'em a bit of good unless they know how to control
the steam ... see ... If you can't control ... the steam, then it's Powder
Valley for you and your whole gang.

If you ever see a steam boiler go out of control, then you see a whole lot of
people running for their lives. And those people, they are not thinking about
that boiler as a capital asset, they are not thinking about the return on
their investment, they are not thinking about the escrow accounts and the
audits and the prudent thing ... see ... They are saying, 'Great God
almighty, I lost control,' and they are running for their lives. They're
trying to save their very hides."

"You see this house?" He gestured vaguely toward the ceiling. "This house was
built in the year nineteen hundred and six by a man named Stanley Lightfoot
Bowman. Lightfoot. Turkish towels and damask tablecloths, wholesale, Stanley
Lightfoot Bowman. He sold those Turkish towels and damask tablecloths in job
lots. He spent almost a half a million dollars on this house in nineteen
hundred and six ... see ... The man's initials, S.L.B., they're down there
made of bronze, going all the way up the stairs, instead a spindles.

This was the place to be in nineteen hundred and six. They built these big
houses all the way up the West Side, starting at Seventy-second Street, all
the way up here. Yeah, and I bought this house from a—from a Jewish fellow—in
nineteen hundred and seventy-eight for sixty-two thousand dollars, and that
fellow was happy to get that money. He was licking his chops and saying, 'I
got some—some fool to give me sixty-two thousand dollars for that place.'
Well, what happened to all those Stanley Lightfoot Bowmans? Did they lose
their money?

No, they lost control ... see ... They lost control north of Ninety-sixth
Street, and when they lost control, they lost the capital.

You understand? All that capital, it vanished off the face of the earth.  The
house was still there, but the capital, it vanished ... see ...  So what
I'm telling you is, you best be waking up. You're practicing the capitalism
of the future, and you don't even know it. You're not investing in a day-care
center for the children of Harlem. You're investing in the souls ... the
souls ... of the people who've been in Harlem too long to look at it like
children any longer, people who've grown up with a righteous anger in their
hearts and a righteous steam building up in their souls, ready to blow. A
righteous steam. 

When you people come up here and talk about 'minority contractors' and
'minority hiring' and day-care centers for the street people, of the street
people, and by the street people, you're humming the right tune, but you
don't want to sing the right words. You don't want to come right out and say
it: 'Please, dear Lord, God almighty, let'm do what they want with the money,
just so long's it controls the steam ... before it's too late ... Well,
you go ahead and have your audit and talk to your HRA and reorganize your
boards and cross all the t's and dot all the i's. 

Meantime, I've done your investing for you, and thanks to me, you're already
ahead of the game ... Oh, conduct your audit! ... But the time is coming when
you will say: 'Thank God. Thank God! Thank God we entered the money on the
books Reverend Bacon's way!'  Because I'm the conservative, whether you know
it or not. You don't know who's out there on those wild and hungry streets. I
am your prudent broker on Judgment Day. Harlem, the Bronx, and Brooklyn,
they're gonna blow, my friend, and on that day, how grateful you will be for
your prudent broker ... your prudent broker ... who can control the steam. Oh
yes. On that day, the owners of capital, how happy they will be to exchange
what they own, how happy they will be to give up their very birthirights,
just to control that wild and hungry steam. No, you go on back down, and you
say, 'Bishop, I've been uptown, and I'm here to tell you we made a good
investment. We found a prudent broker. We're gonna occupy the high ground
when it all comes down." p.142


Eternal tide of chromosomes


from Lord Buffings "Masque of Red Death" speech
[at the Bavardage party]

Families, homes, children, the great chain of being, the eternal tide of
chromosomes mean nothing to them any longer.  They are bound together, and
they whirl about one another, endlessly, particles in a doomed atom—and what
else could the Red Death be but some sort of final stimulation, the ne plus
ultra?  p.335


Is the Law subject to societal pressure?


Richard A. Posner in the article
The Depiction of Law in the Bonfire of the Vanities
(1988)
http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2807&context=journal_articles

What does the novel tell us about how lay people view the law? I think
nothing beyond what is obvious from finer fictional works, such as The
Brothers Karamazov and Pickwick Papers: that they expect technicalities
to matter (and it is on a technicality that the first indictment against Mc-
Coy is dismissed); that they are not surprised when miscarriages of justice
occur (McCoy, remember, is innocent of the charges against him, and the
real culprits are used as false witnesses by the prosecution); that they expect
legal proceedings to be interminable and excruciatingly expensive;
and that they are unillusioned about the moral and intellectual qualities of
judges, lawyers, jurors, and other participants in the machinery of legal
justice, and about the corrosion of that machinery by political and personal
ambitions and fears. Judge Kovitsky does get to make a Law Day
speech to Larry Kramer: "What makes you think you can come before the
bench waving the banner of community pressure? The law is not a creature
of the few or of the many. The court is not swayed by your threats"
(p. 676). But Kovitsky is duly punished for his independence: he is denied
renomination.

---blurb
The #1 bestseller that will forever define late-twentieth-century New York
style. "No one has portrayed New York Society this accurately and
devastatingly since Edith Wharton" (The National Review) 

 

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This review by Amit Mukerjee was last updated on : 2015 Sep 18