The Bonfire of the Vanities

Thomas Victor (Author Photograph) London: Jonathan Cape, 1988. Second U.K. Printing. Hardcover. [8], 659, [3] pages. Inscribed by the author on the half-title page. Inscription reads: To Tracy, a matter for vanity. Tom Wolfe Includes Prologue and Epilogue, as well as chapters on Mutt on Fire; The Master of the Universe; Gibraltar; From the Fiftieth Floor; King of the Jungle; The Girl with Brown Lipstick; A Leader of he People; Catching the Fish; The Case; Some Brit Named Fallow; Saturday's Saturnine Lunchtime; The Words on the Floor; The Last of the Great Smokers; The Day-Glo Eel; I Don't Know How to Lie; Tawkin Irish; The Favor Bank; Shuhmun; Donkey Loyalty; Calls from Above; The Fabulous Koala; Styrofoam Peanuts; Inside the Cavity; The Informants; We the Jury; Death New York Style; Hero of the Hive; Off to a Better Place; The Rendezvous; An Able Pupil; Into the Solar Plexus; and Epilogue/ Financier Is Arraigned. 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, 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 as virulent. Tom Wolfe (1930–2018) was a contributing editor to Harper's. Some of his most influential writings were published in that magazine, including “The Painted Word,” “Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast,” and “From Bauhaus to Our House.” His essays and journalism, as elegant as the figure he cut, have greatly enhanced the esteem Harper’s has enjoyed over the past half century. Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr. (March 2, 1930 – May 14, 2018)[a] was an American author and journalist widely known for his association with New Journalism, a style of news writing and journalism developed in the 1960s and 1970s that incorporated literary techniques. Wolfe began his career as a regional newspaper reporter in the 1950s, achieving national prominence in the 1960s following the publication of such best-selling books as The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (a highly experimental account of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters) and two collections of articles and essays, Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers and The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. In 1979, he published the influential book The Right Stuff about the Mercury Seven astronauts, which was made into a 1983 film of the same name directed by Philip Kaufman. His first novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, published in 1987, was met with critical acclaim and also became a commercial success. It was adapted as a major motion picture of the same name directed by Brian De Palma. Derived from a Kirkus review: Sheer entertainment against a fabulous background, proving that late-blooming first-novelist Wolfe, a superobserver of the social scene, has the right stuff for fiction. Undertaken as a serial for Rolling Stone, his magnum opus hits the ball far, far, far out of the park. Son of Park Avenue wealth, Sherman McCoy at 35 is perhaps the greatest bond salesman on Wall Street, and eats only the upper crust. But millionaire Sherman's constant inner cry is that he is "hemorrhaging money." He's also a jerk, ripe for humiliation; and when his humiliation arrives, it is fearsome. Since this is also the story of The Law as it applies to rich and poor, especially to blacks and Hispanics of the Bronx, Wolfe has a field day familiarizing the reader with the politics and legal machinations that take place in the Bronx County Courthouse, a fortress wherein Sherman McCoy becomes known as the Great White Defendant. One evening, married Sherman picks up his $100-million mistress Maria at Kennedy Airport, gets lost bringing her back in his $48,000 Mercedes-Benz, is attacked by two blacks on a ramp in the Bronx. When Maria jumps behind the wheel, one black is hit by the car. Later, he lapses into a terminal coma, but not before giving his mother part of Sherman's license plate. This event is hyped absurdly by an alcoholic British reporter for the The City Light, the mugger becomes an "honor student," and Sherman becomes the object of vile racist attacks mounted by a charlatan black minister. Chunk by chunk, Sherman loses every footing in his life but gains his manhood. Meanwhile, Wolfe triumphantly mounts scene after magnificent scene depicting the vanity of human endeavor, with every character measured by his shoes and suits or dresses, his income and expenses, and with his vain desires rising in smoke against settings that would make a Hollywood director's tongue hang out. Often hilarious, and much, much more. Condition: Good / Good.

Keywords: Sherman McCoy, Wall Street, Bond Trader, Racism, Car Accident, Mercedes-Benz, Attack, Bronx, County Courthouse, Mugger

ISBN: 0224024396

[Book #82382]

Price: $335.00

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