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The Bonfire of the Vanities is a 1987 novel by Tom Wolfe. The story is a drama about ambition, racism, and greed in 1980s New York City, and centers on three main characters: the successful, arrogant, and very self-conscious bond trader Sherman McCoy, Jewish Assistant District Attorney Larry Kramer, and British expatriate journalist Peter Fallow.

The novel was a bestseller and a phenomenal success, even in comparison with Wolfe's other books. The title is a reference to a historical event, the Bonfire of the Vanities, which took place in 1497, in Florence, Italy, when the city was under the rule of the Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola. The story told in the book and the movie is not a retelling of this historic event, it is a reference to the vanities and materialism of the boom-era 1980s on Wall Street.

Contents 1 Plot summary 2 Style and content 3 Trivia 4 References

The plot centres on Sherman McCoy, whose life as a so-called "Master of The Universe" on Wall Street is destroyed as a result of one wrong turn off a freeway into the Bronx leads to his mistress, Maria Ruskin, running over a black youth (Henry Lamb) while driving his car.

Peter Fallow, a washed-up, drunken British journalist for the tabloid City Light, is given the opportunity of a lifetime when he is persuaded to write a series of articles about the case of a young black man who had been the victim of a hit and run by a white driver. Fallow is skeptical as he suspects that he is being used by a local religious and political leader, Reverend Bacon, who is using the case to improve his own political standing among New York's black community. Bacon encourages the mother of the now comatose victim of the hit and run to sue the hospital her son is in for not giving him proper treatment that could have saved him.

When Sherman is identified as the owner of the car from the hit and run attack, Fallow begins a biased series of articles that insinuate Sherman McCoy's guilt (a series for which he is ultimately awarded a Pulitzer Prize). McCoy becomes the most hated man in New York City and the focus of relentless attacks from leftist demonstrators. Abe Weiss, a self-absorbed Bronx District Attorney up for re-election, decides that McCoy must be convicted by any means necessary (including obtaining false testimony from Sherman's mistress) so that he can use the conviction of McCoy to sway the black residents of New York City to re-elect him.

When McCoy's mistress flees the country with another man in order to avoid having to admit to being the real driver, Sherman's private investigator discovers a recording of an incriminating conversation made by the landlord of Sherman and Ruskin's rendezvous. McCoy uses the tape (which he claims to have recorded himself) to have the initial charges against him dropped. The main narrative of the novel ends with a near riot outside the courtroom in which McCoy loses his head and almost knocks down several protesters.

In a fictional New York Times article at the end of the book, we learn that Fallow has married a wealthy woman, and Maria (the mistress) has escaped prosecution while Sherman McCoy is penniless and awaits trial for manslaughter.

Bonfire was Tom Wolfe's first novel. Wolfe's works before the novel were non-fiction, journalistic articles and books. His literary and journalistic styles have much in common; specifically a fascination with the seemingly fantastic stories and surprising details in American life. Like his previous writing, Bonfire fuses intrigue, plot, and sociological detail.

For example, the plot relies on class conflicts in mid-1980s New York, and the exploitation of those conflicts by politicians and others, personal conflicts, and culture of the Bronx Courthouse. In textured and lengthy chapters that could have been inspired by Émile Zola, Wolfe tells the reader that the court typist is, in a strange reversal, the haughtiest, best-paid employee; while the judge, usually superior and powerful in other courts, must divide his time equally between intimidating the crowd, the defenders, and the district attorneys in an (often futile) attempt to keep order.

Wolfe provides amusing asides on the gait of defendants, the clothing and peculiar accents of New Yorkers in every tier of society. Author Frank Conroy, in a New York Times Book Review article on the novel, said he found this attention to detail tiresome, especially the attention to accents. Wolfe responded that this attention to detail is essential and lamentably absent in most contemporary literature. In an article in Harper's Magazine, Wolfe chastised modern authors for making excursions into mythic fantasy worlds in order to keep the novel fresh and interesting. It is his belief that journalistic research reveals a world more interesting and complex than anything a single author can dream up.

Wolfe did not intend his work to be a roman a clef; most characters in Bonfire are not fictionalized accounts of real-life figures. According to Wolfe, the characters are composites of many individuals and cultural observations. However, some characters were based on real people. Wolfe has acknowledged the character of Tommy Killian is based on New York lawyer Edward Hayes, to whom the book is dedicated.

• The judge in the novel was based on real-life Bronx Administrative Judge Burt Roberts.^[1]
• In episode 2.07 of Family Guy, The King is Dead, Peter Griffin claims to have written The Bonfire of the Vanities.
• A Simpsons episode is called Bonfire of the Manatees.
• In the Futurama episode, The Day The Earth Stood Stupid, Fry reads this book to destroy the evil brain invaders.
• The title is taken from an event carried out in Florence in 1497 in which Girolamo Savonarola, a fanatic Catholic leader, ordered and carried out a massive bonfire in which were burned countless works of literature and art, as well as other "immoral" possessions such as playing cards.

1. ^ "Bleeding Hearts," Village Voice, October 12th, 2004