My latest article for
Bibliomula is
out now, but if you don't speak Spanish, here's what I wrote about Tom Wolfe's
The Bonfire of the Vanities in English.
New York has always seemed like a spiritual home for me. I grew up with images of the city, from television, films, books and the stories told to me by my father who had lived there for a few years. Central Park, the Empire State Building and the Metropolitan Museum of Art have long been familiar to me, although I only visited New York for the first time last year.
New York is billed as the place where "dreams come true", where anyone can get rich or find the love of their life atop the Empire State - perhaps even both on the same day. But unlike the fairy tale, what has always fascinated me most is the other side of the megalopolis, its hidden, sordid side. From
American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis (1991) to
Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo (2003), novels that juxtapose the high life of wealth and beauty with violence, corruption and depravity never fail to draw me in. Morally bankrupt characters are always the most engaging. And undoubtedly the masterpiece of the genre is
The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe (1987), an epic for the modern age that paints a bleak picture of all of New York, from the Bronx to Park Avenue.
Born in 1931, Wolfe became famous for his trademark white suit and the invention of 'New Journalism'. Departing from the traditional idea of journalism as impartial and formal writing, Wolfe pioneered a creative and experimental journalism. His greatest talent is the true-to-life reproduction of speech, incorporating slang, phonetic spelling and erratic punctuation, which gives his stories a sense of urgency and a real spark. In the sixties, his non-fiction books -
The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (1965) and
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) - captured the spirit of the age: experimentation, psychedelia, freedom.
When money and power took the place of freedom and self-expression as the dominant values of the eighties, Wolfe used all of his experimental literary techniques to create
The Bonfire of the Vanities, a captivating portrait of the New York melting-pot, inspired by William Makepeace Thackeray's
Vanity Fair (1848), presenting a cross-section of contemporary society. The title also refers to a medieval Florentine ritual in which objects accused of inducing sin were burnt; an apt title for a novel full of all manner of sins.
The novel is set in a key period in the recent history of the United States, marked by racial tensions and the height of Wall Street power. It starts in the Bronx, where racial tensions reach boiling point and violence erupts. This chaos is then juxtaposed with the trading floor of Pierce & Pierce, where Sherman McCoy is the star stockbroker. Everyone shouts and swears here too, but on the trading floor they do it for a six-figure salary. Between these extremes, orbit a growing list of characters. There are the manipulating English, like journalist Peter Fallow, who charm American wannabes into paying for their binges. There are the assistant district attorneys, like Larry Kramer, who struggle to make do with meagre salaries while getting off on the power to imprison criminals. There are the schemers like Rev. Reginald Bacon, who accuse everyone of being racist and incite violence in order to further their own careers. When Sherman has an accident with fatal consequences, it reveals how all these worlds are interrelated and are a lot more than it first seems. Rich or poor, everyone is after the same things: sex, status, power. Everyone exploits everyone else for their own benefit.
One of Wolfe's key achievements was counteracting the myth of Wall Street as the Promised Land. He describes in detail lavish dinners and luxurious apartments which 'haemorrhage money', to show how just vacuous they are. Although he refers to himself as 'Master of the Universe', Sherman is not happy. He is obsessed with money and seeks solace in a dingy apartment with a young lover. Behind the veneer of decency, the rich are as immoral as the criminals in the Bronx.
While it may seem heavy (physically and in terms of content), The Bonfire of the Vanities is actually full of humor and action. In Wolfe's typical style, there is no omniscient narrator, which keeps the reader guessing. The events are told again and again from different points of view, manipulated for political gain, exaggerated to sell newspapers, spread through backstreet whispers. At each point, the reader is never sure of the truth and Wolfe revels in the ambiguity.
It is now twenty five years since Wolfe wrote The Bonfire of the Vanities. Has New York changed? The city has gone through Guiliani's 'clean-up', shared with the rest of the country the arrival of the first black president in the history of the United States of America and witnessed Wall Street reforms, so you would hope that crime, racial tensions and wealth inequality, would decrease. However, a quick glance at the news suffices to prove that all these challenges persist. Moreover, if there's one thing I've learned from Gossip Girl (the TV series, and novels by Cecily von Ziegesar on which it is based), it's that Sherman's world is still very much alive. The wealthy New Yorkers continue to live extravagant and luxurious lives, full of vice without consequence.
The Bonfire of the Vanities is a book that you can't put down. An enduring study of human character and a historic document in equal measure. It captured with precision a fundamental era, whose presence is still keenly felt in New York today.
