The proposer first read “The Bonfire of the Vanities” in
1990, shortly after its publication in 1987. He loved its energy and humour. He
identified with and felt sorry for Sherman McCoy, the bond salesman whose
enchanted life as a master of the universe falls apart. The proposer knew three
solicitors who had found themselves caught up in scandals, two of whom had
committed suicide. He now wanted to revisit the book to see if it retained its
contemporary relevance and comic zest.
Tom Wolfe was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1931. He
majored in English at Washington and Lee, and then did post-graduate studies at
Yale. He became a successful journalist, and collaborated with Truman Capote
and Hunter Davies in the “New Journalism” movement in which various literary
techniques were mixed with traditional even-handed reporting. He also wrote
fact-based books including “The Right Stuff”, which was made into a film in the
1970s. By this time he lived in New York where he was noted for his white
suits, cane and hat – all to suggest a Southern Planter.
His lengthy and polemical introduction to the novel sets out
his aesthetic. He felt the American novel had lost its way around 1960, when
the novel as “sublime literary game” displaced realistic depiction of society
in the style of Dickens, Zola, Faulkner or Steinbeck. The traditional novel was
seen as dead, and in its place came Absurdist novels, Magic Realist novels,
novels of Radical Disjunction, Neo-Fabulist novels, Minimalist novels….Wolfe,
however, was clear that “the future of the fictional novel would be in a
highly detailed realism based on reporting, a realism more thorough than any
currently being attempted, a realism that would portray the individual in intimate
and inextricable relation to the society around him”.
This novel had a long gestation period. Wolfe wanted to
write a novel that captured New York and its wide spectrum of society in the
1980s in the way that Dickens and Thackeray had captured nineteenth century
London, and Zola had captured Paris. Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair” was the novel
that particularly appealed to him as a model, and is echoed in his title. And,
finding he was procrastinating, he agreed with his editor to publish the novel
in serial form in the best Dickensian tradition, in the hope that the magazine
deadlines would impel him to apply himself . The novel was duly serialised in
“Rolling Stone”, and the technique proved very successful in getting Wolfe to
apply his shoulder to the wheel.
The published novel, three years later, had significant
changes from the serial version, with McCoy being changed from writer to
banker, and Judy’s role diminished while that of Fallows increased. Sales were
very high, and, as icing on the cake, race riots and a Wall Street crash shortly
followed publication. Wolfe was seen as strangely prescient.
So what did we make of it? The first issue raised was
length. Your scribe’s copy runs to 741 pages, and they are big pages with small
print, so it weighs in at around Dickensian length. In the Book Group’s history
of nearly ten years, “Berlioz Vol.1” was the only other book of comparable
length we could remember. And for some it was slow to get going and too long
overall, but all of us found ourselves soon caught up in the story, which was
quite a page-turner. Perhaps some of Wolfe’s detail was unnecessary or
uninteresting, but the same is true of Dickens. The length of the book may be
partly caused by its episodic magazine base, as with Dickens, but detail is
integral to Wolfe’s realist aesthetic.
So…. (your reporter paused briefly at this point to wince
at the “South Australia Shiraz” he had picked up in his haste)…..
What sort of novel is it?...( and what kind of wine do
you expect for £3.99?)…
At one level it is indeed social realism, with the vast gulf
between the rich of Manhattan and the poor of the Bronx starkly delineated, as
is the fear of the white rich towards the black poor. And there is almost no
connection between the two worlds. Wolfe has succeeded in capturing a city.
Social change is recorded, as the historic roles – Irish the police, Jews the
manufacturers, Italians the retailers, and the Wasps in the professions - are breaking down. The dispossessed
are getting more and more bitter, and there will be more and more explosions.
Lord Buffing, who is dying, gives a speech at a dinner which
evokes Poe’s “Masque of Red Death”, with the rich trying, and failing, to
escape the plague by staying in a well provisioned palace cut off from the poor.
The idea that the New York rich cannot escape disaster is also echoed in the
scene where Ruskin drops dead despite the gross lavishness of the restaurant
where he is dining.
But, in our view, above all the novel was a satire, and a
black satire at that. Wolfe does not take aim only at the glittering world of
excessively rich bond brokers – the masters of the universe - and their
partners. He also sets his sights on corrupt mayors and on DAs who pursue
re-election rather than justice. He exposes the synthetic outrage of black
community leaders who chase wealth and power, not social progress. He exposes
newspapers and journalists whose interest is sales whatever the truth and whatever the
cost to individuals. A world, in short, of greed, lechery, vanity, dishonesty
and corruption – everyone, rich or poor, white or black, has an angle. Everyone
is on the make. Everything has a price.
There are only one or two characters who have any moral
scruples, and they are minor characters. The most striking is Judge Kovitsky,
who, obscene and venomous as he is, actually believes in justice.
This vision is in some ways bleaker than that of Dickens,
whose hypocrites, graspers and social climbers are always counterbalanced by
people of integrity and human kindness. It means that many of Wolfe’s
characters are caricatures, which is the nature of the satirical genre.
However, some characters do develop into more rounded human beings, in
particular bond salesman Sherman (“Shuman”) McCoy and Assistant District
Attorney Larry Kramer, and to a lesser extent the drunken journalist Peter
Fallow. Even then, Sherman and Kramer are very similar people, one of whom made
a career choice that led to wealth and the other a career choice that led to
relative poverty. This parallel is highlighted when Kramer uses the same flat
for a sexual conquest that Sherman has used for assignations with his mistress.
Some felt that this absence of sympathetic or virtuous
characters led to the inconclusive ending – neither side could be allowed to
win. On the other hand, the Jarndyce v Jarndyce style gridlock at the end could
be seen as further satire aimed at the American legal system.
Ah…. the second bottle turns out to be
St-Georges-St-Emilion. Better!.....
The satire is not confined to the big issues of dishonesty
and corruption. Wolfe is also very perceptive – and witty - about human
psychology. He lays bare the day to day foibles of social one-up-manship, of
drinking, of attempts to impress the opposite sex, and of vanity of all sorts.
Indeed it is hard to imagine, after Wolfe’s merciless analysis of the social
rituals of hostesses at New York parties, that he was ever invited to such a
party again.
I’ll keep it in the brown paper bag in case anyone else
wants some….
What to make of Sherman? Hero or anti-hero? Is there a clue
that he is named – by a southern writer
– after the most brutal of Unionist generals? Some felt that the story
is that of the redemption of Sherman through suffering. He has lost all his
attachment to wealth, all of his “vanities”. On the other hand, as soon as the
court case starts going his way, Wolfe shows how quickly he reverts to type, to
boasting about his triumphs to any attractive woman in range. And amusingly Wall Street
bond traders are said to have started imitating Sherman’s behaviour as a result
of the book.
But it was difficult not to feel sympathy for “Shuman” as
his world inexorably disintegrates, to be made in Kafka fashion to realise just
how quickly and easily you can fall right through the floor of your comfortable
existence.
You can speculate about the real people satirized in the
novel – such as black community leader Al Sharpton as the model for Beaton, or
Ed Koch as the model for the Mayor, or Imelda Marcos as the model for Madame
Tacaya. But the amusement gleaned from trying to make these identifications
disappears quickly over time (try ploughing through the footnotes to Dryden’s
“Absalom and Acitophel” in search of amusement). What will make this novel
appreciated for a very long time is the unerring accuracy with which human
weakness is depicted, and the wit with which it is done.
Indeed the most attractive thing about the book is its
humour (which reminded some of
John Kennedy Toole). The death of the husband of Foxy in a pretentious
restaurant with obsequious staff (which is surely one of the funniest scenes in
literature)…….. Shuman’s contortions as he is drawn into a clinch with his
mistress while trying not to reveal he is concealing a tape recorder….. everybody doing the
pimp roll….The “girl with the brown lips”, object of Kramer’s endless attempts
to impress in order to bed her, musing that it was impossible to get laid in
New York without first listening to hour after hour of male boasting…..
But, dear reader, I shall not give you 741 pages of
examples. Read the book!
