The Bonfire of the Vanities
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In his novel The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe brings to fiction the same reporter's eye that served him as a journalist over a long career. In a review in the Wall Street Journal, Christopher Buckley stated that Wolfe himself had said that there are no villains in the novel, but Buckley states that the book seems filled with villains because it "teems with the vain, the greedy, the soulless, the self-important, the envious." Buckley is right in his characterization of the characters inhabiting this novel, but he is wrong that this means the novel has a villain. More correctly, he is wrong that the novel has a human villain. An examination of the novel shows that there is no human hero and no human villain in this novel, but there is both a hero and a villain of a different sort. The hero is New York City itself, which is a hero in the sense of being the protagonist of the novel rather than of being a shining example to others or a model of courage. The villain is what is often referred to derisively as The System, which in this case includes the government, the social structure, the racial and class divisions in the city, and especially the legal system, which stands as the primary villain in this book.The closest thing to a human hero in the novel is Sherman McCoy, and he truly has feet of clay. He does become more radicalized as the novel progresses, but he never overcomes The System. His heroism comes in challenging it and in defying it, but he never rises
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idn't waste time trying to bring the marginal cases forward, unless the press was on your back. They hauled in guilt by the tone, those blue-and-orange vans out there on Walton Avenue.
Aspects of the New York power structure are presented in this book through the eyes of the British journalist Fallow, a man seeking the opportunity that America promises and who finds it in this story, the story of a hit-and-run and all that it reveals about the city and about the people of the city. This is precisely the sort of story that Kramer fears, a story that will put the press at his back. This is a key element in this story--The System operates in its confused and overcrowded fashion all the time, but it is when the media spotlight falls on The System that it begins to all apart and its strains become too great. Most of the time the different factions in the city complain about The System but do not try to do much about it. When a crisis occurs, however, The system becomes the target that cannot really be hit because it has always been in charge and will continue on its messed-up way once the spotlight moves to something else. The System is the villain because it is inexorable, with a life of its own that undercuts the beauties of
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Some common words found in the essay are:
York City, Aspects York, Lopowitz Sherman--is, Asians Jews, Wall Street, Christopher Buckley, DA Bronx, Sherman McCoy, Irish Chippendale, Ronald Vine, york city, wall street, power structure, york city hero, legal system, city hero, human villain, novel hero, white power, human hero, novel human,
Approximate Word count = 1820
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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