The cleverness is in how the various worlds within New York are depicted through the eyes of these characters and how they fit together in the big, messy mosaic: the worlds of high-stakes bonds traders, inhabitants of the projects, toilers in the Bronx court system, tabloid reporters at their hangouts, Park Avenue high society at their parties.Īnd, this being Tom Wolfe, the cleverness is also in the flashy, overheated, kaleidoscopic presentation of the mental lives of these people.
Actually the woman was driving but various forces-including the police, district attorney's office, mayor, newspapers and community activists-work to catch and convict the guy for the allegedly hate-motivated crime, mainly because he is rich and white. A rich, white guy and his mistress take a couple of wrong turns in his car and end up running down a black kid in a poor neighbourhood. Not clever in its plot-it is somewhat simple compared to your average legal thriller these days. The Bonfire of the Vanities is certainly one of the cleverest novels you'll ever read. What does "heart" mean anyway? Sentimentality? A happy ending? Inspirational passages? I can tell you though what the book is missing: A heart. So many people, whose opinions I otherwise value, have told me how incredibly impressed they were by The Bonfire of the Vanities that I wonder what I'm missing, since I have only a middling appreciation for Tom Wolfe's first novel.
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