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Introduction

The Bonfire of the Vanities is a 1987 novel by Tom Wolfe. The story is a drama about ambition, racism, social class, politics, and greed in 1980s New York City and centers on four main characters: WASP bond trader Sherman McCoy, Jewish Assistant District Attorney Larry Kramer, British expatriate journalist Peter Fallow and black activist Reverend Reginald Bacon.

The novel was originally a serial in the style of Charles Dickens' writings; it ran in 27 installments in Rolling Stone starting in 1984. Wolfe heavily revised it before it was published in book form.

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 book's title is said to be a reference to the vanities of New York society of the 1980s, but Biblical scholars will recognize that it is heavily influenced by Ecclesiastes, the book of wisdom traditionally ascribed to Solomon but actually written between about 400 and 200 BC by a Jewish scholar known as Qoheleth. The phrase 'vanity of vanities, all is vanity' is taken from Ecclesiastes, and the themes of both books (the lack of control we have over our lives regardless of how wealthy, wise or successful we might be) are remarkably similar. Tom Wolfe wrote in 1968, “For of all I have ever seen or learned, this book [Ecclesiastes] seems to me the noblest, the wisest, and the most powerful expression of man’s life upon this earth – and also the highest flower of poetry, eloquence, and truth. I am not given to dogmatic judgments in the matter of literary creation, but if I had to make one I could say that Ecclesiastes is the greatest single piece of writing I have ever known, and the wisdom expressed in it the most lasting and profound.”