Bookworm Review: The Bonfire of the Vanities

I finished reading The Bonfire of the Vanities (Tom Wolfe) a couple of weeks ago and haven't had a chance to sit down and write about it. It's on my Influential Books List and my Busy Bookworm Challenge List, so woohoo for me!

The story is set in New York in the 1980s and is centered around the main character, Sherman McCoy. McCoy is a Wall Street investment banker who basically thinks he's hot stuff. He makes a million dollars a year, has an apartment featured in an architectural magazine, and sends his daughter to a posh private school. Yet McCoy is barely making ends meet, though his high-society wife doesn't know how much they're struggling financially. McCoy's life turns upside down when he and his mistress are involved in a hit-and-run accident, which he tries to hide from everyone...though that strategy doesn't work for very long. A young, black boy was the victim of the accident and when leaders of the black community demand action, the racial tension heightens.

Initially I had a difficult time really getting into the plot of this story. The point of view shifts often, from McCoy, to the district attorney, to a tabloid newspaper writer, to the Reverend (leader of the black community), and to another lawyer. The characters, especially McCoy, are arrogant and pompous, though each has his or her own "special" way of being completely awful. Wolfe was trying to create an atmosphere of "excess" and he does that through his descriptions... and the sheer number of words he uses! Seriously, Wolfe was definitely wordy and the book could've been shortened considerably. Some of the side stories could have been omitted altogether, especially because Wolfe never finished many of the minor plot lines, yet they took up a good deal of space.

In spite of myself, after a certain point in the story, I found myself actually hoping that Sherman McCoy was going to be OK. It seemed to me that McCoy had grown a little during the story and he became slightly less arrogant and somewhat more human. McCoy's foil in the story, the district attorney, became more full of himself, more dramatic, and less ethical as the story progressed and I found myself, rightfully so, disliking him even more. By the end of the story I was sick of his character, scenes involving him, and generally happy when he was put in his place.

Wolfe also presents many issues surrounding race and fairness, which add another level to the story- everyone has his or her own perspectives and stereotypes and has to figure out some way to deal with others who are different. I found myself sometimes more interested in the cultural identities than the plot and wished something more would've happened with that aspect...if that makes sense.

Overall, I'm not sure I'd recommend this book, unless you really like long, wordy books with a lot of characters and an ending that isn't prettily tied up (with a bow). I'm also not sure why this book made that darn list of influential books... Anyway, I am a little curious to see how the book was adapted for the movie.

On second thought, I'm not that curious. The book was quite enough.