description: 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 in the last years of the twentieth century, 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.We see this feverish landscape through the eyes of McCoy's wife and his mistress; the young prosecutor for whom the McCoy case would be the answer to a prayer; the ne'er-do-well British journalist who needs such a case to save his career in America; the street-wise Irish lawyer who becomes McCoy's only ally; and Reverend Bacon of Harlem, a master manipulator of public opinion. Above all, we see what happens when the criminal justice system-gorged with "the chow," as the Bronx prosecutor calls the borough's usual black and Latin felons-considers the prospect of being banded a prime cut like Sherman McCoy of Park Avenue.
language: English
title: The Bonfire of the Vanities
titlecomplete: The Bonfire of the Vanities
characters: Linwood Talley, Warren Bottomley, John Campbell McCoy, Guliaggi, Red Pitt, Sherman McCoy, Huck Thigg, Brian Highridge, Jimmy Caughey, Kate di Ducci, Irv Stone, Lewis Sanderson, Annie Lamb, Gil Archer, Baron Hochswald, Eugene Lopwitz, Bernard Levy, Ferdinand Arguello, Alex Britt-Withers, Gloria Dawson, Arthur Ruskin, Nick Stopping, Miss Lyons, Peter Fallow, Greg Rosenwald, Caroline Heftshank, Mike Bellavita, Asher Herzfeld, St. John Thomas
genres: 20th Century, American, New York, Literary Fiction, Novels, Literature, Classics, Fiction, Contemporary, Humor
ratings_count: 79406
places: New York City, New York, New York (State)
awards: awardedAt: 568022400000
name: Ambassador Book Award
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 536486400000
name: National Book Critics Circle Award
category: Fiction