Wolfe, Tom;
The Bonfire of the Vanities: A Novel
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002, 704 pages
ISBN 1429960566, 9781429960564
topics: | fiction | usa |
This is definitely towards the top of my all-time fiction list. Not because it is a superb portrayal of the New York of the 1990s. But because it underlines the violence of the racism that goes on today, worldwide. The masters of the Universe mentality is the indoctrination that fuels terrorsim today. The story is continuing all around us, as politically stronger groups worldwide prevent the weak from growing. It is not a tale of "steam control" among the blacks of Harlem - it is also the story of the Palestinians caged up in 30 feet walls, Santhals robbed of their livelihood by traders, the dirt-poor shack-blacks of We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo (2013) and a hundred other disenfranchised populations. In his Violence: six sideways reflections Slavoj Zizek ruminates on how such the violence of the upper classes turns invisible as society accepts it as the norm. It becomes "like the notorious 'dark matter' of physics". In the post-9/11 world, the book has taken on additional relevance: Deborah Eisenberg embraces the notion of September 11th as a bonfire of the vanities. The story is an acerbic parable about a group of spoiled young people living beyond their means in a borrowed loft in downtown Manhattan. Their expensive view turns into a curse, however, when it forces them to see too much: “the planes struck, tearing through the curtain of that blue September morning, exposing the dark world that lay right behind it, of populations ruthlessly exploited, inflamed with hatred, and tired of waiting for change to happen by.” - http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/9-11-american-fiction-literature-terrorism A few liberal voices have taken an interesting view of the novel's success among the general population of white Americans in the 1990s : Ronald L. Kuby, former partner of the radical lawyer William Kunstler [model for Al Vogel in the book], said in a NYT interview: It struck a chord with white people when it came out, because white people in New York very much wanted to see themselves as victims rather than perpetrators. Usually perpetrators want to see themselves as misunderstood victims. But seldom do they have a writer of the caliber of Tom Wolfe to give them that voice. In 1987, the white-dominated criminal justice system was engaged in wholesale discrimination against black people — discrimination in virtually every form, from police brutality on the streets to disparate prosecutions to disparate sentences for African-American defendants. ... “Bonfire of the Vanities” ... managed to create a fantasy criminal justice system where rich, white Sherman McCoy is being railroaded by a combination of craven black leaders and corrupt journalists and spineless political leaders. That was white people’s fantasy, that was not black people’s reality. It was a fundamentally racist novel appealing to the very worst in white people, at their most privileged and snivelly.
At that very moment, in the very sort of Park Avenue co-op apartment that so obsessed the Mayor ... twelve-foot ceilings ... two wings, one for the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants who own the place and one for the help ... Sherman McCoy was kneeling in his front hall trying to put a leash on a dachshund. The floor was a deep green marble, and it went on and on. It led to a fivefoot- wide walnut staircase that swept up in a sumptuous curve to the floor above. It was the sort of apartment the mere thought of which ignites flames of greed and covetousness under people all over New York and, for that matter, all over the world. But Sherman burned only with the urge to get out of this fabulous spread of his for thirty minutes. Still young ... thirty-eight years old ... tall ... almost six-one ... terrific posture ... terrific to the point of imperious ... as imperious as his daddy, the Lion of Dunning Sponget ... a full head of sandy-brown hair ... a long nose ... a prominent chin ... He was proud of his chin. The McCoy chin; the Lion had it, too. It was a manly chin, a big round chin such as Yale men used to have in those drawings by Gibson and Leyendecker, an aristocratic chin, if you want to know what Sherman thought. He was a Yale man himself. Today good-looking ... Tomorrow they'll be talking about what a handsome woman she is.
The Masters of the Universe were a set of lurid, rapacious plastic dolls that his otherwise perfect daughter liked to play with. They looked like Norse gods who lifted weights, and they had names such as Dracon, Ahor, Mangelred, and Blutong. They were unusually vulgar, even for plastic toys. Yet one fine day, in a fit of euphoria, after he had picked up the telephone and taken an order for zero-coupon bonds that had brought him a $50,000 commission, just like that, this very phrase had bubbled up into his brain. On Wall Street he and a few others— how many? —three hundred, four hundred, five hundred?— had become precisely that ... Masters of the Universe. There was ... no limit whatsoever! Naturally he had never so much as whispered this phrase to a living soul. He was no fool. Yet he couldn't get it out of his head. Browning looked Sherman and his country outfit and the dog up and down and said, without a trace of a smile, "Hello, Sherman." "Hello, Sherman" was on the end of a ten-foot pole and in a mere four syllables conveyed the message: "You and your clothes and your animal are letting down our new mahoganypaneled elevator." He was only forty but had looked fifty for the past twenty years. Sherman had known him ever since they were boys at the Buckley School. Browning had been a fat, hearty, overbearing junior snob who at the age of nine knew how to get across the astonishing news that McCoy was a hick name (and a hick family), as in Hatfields and McCoys, whereas he, Browning, was a true Knickerbocker. He used to call Sherman "Sherman McCoy the Mountain Boy."
He picks up the telephone and cradles it between his shoulder and his ear and fishes around in his pocket for a quarter and drops it in the slot and dials. v Three rings, and a woman's voice: "Hello?" But it was not Maria's voice. He figured it must be her friend Germaine, the one she sublet the apartment from. So he said: "May I speak to Maria, please?" The woman said: "Sherman? Is that you?" Christ! It's Judy! He's dialed his own apartment! The staircase of the town house sagged and groaned as Sherman walked up. On each floor a single bare 22-watt circular fluorescent tube, known as the Landlord's Halo, radiated a feeble tubercular-blue glow upon the walls, which were Rental Unit Green. Sherman passed apartment doors with innumerable locks, one above the other in drunken columns. There were anti-pliers covers over the locks and anti-jimmy irons over the jambs and anti-push-in screens over the door panels. How bohemian! How ... real this place was! How absolutely right for these moments "Well, if you're already in trouble, and you haven't even done anything, then you might as well do something, since it's all the same difference." Then she touched him. King Priapus, he who had been scared to death, now rose up from the dead. Sprawled on the bed, Sherman caught a glimpse of the dachshund. The beast had gotten up off the rug and had walked over to the bed and was looking up at them and switching his tail. Christ! Was there by any chance some way a dog could indicate . . . Was there anything dogs did that showed they had seen . . . Judy knew about animals. She clucked and fussed over Marshall's every mood, until it was revolting. Was there something dachshunds did after observing . . . But then his nervous system began to dissolve, and he no longer cared. His Majesty, the most ancient king, Priapus, Master of the Universe, had no conscience. --- But what was he worrying about? He wasn't driving the car when it happened—if it happened. Right! If it happened. He hadn't seen the boy get hit, and she hadn't, either, and besides, it was in the heat of a fight for their very lives—and she was driving, in any case. If she didn't want to report it, that was her business. He stopped and took a breath and looked around. Yes; White Manhattan, the sanctuary of the East Seventies. He had fought his way out of an ambush on the nightmare terrain, and he had prevailed. He had saved a woman. The time had come to act like a man, and he had acted and prevailed. He was not merely a Master of the Universe; he was more; he was a man.
[D.A. Larry Kramer in Judge Kovitsky's courtroom. ] Judge Kovitsky: We happen to live in a republic, and in this republic there is a separation of church and state. Do you understand? And this court is governed by the laws of that republic, which are embodied in the Constitution of the United States." Herbert 92X : "That's not true!" "What's not true, Mr. 92X?" "The separation of church and state. And I can prove it." "Whaddaya talking about, Mr. 92X?" "Turn around! Look up on the wall!" Herbert was on his feet again, pointing at the wall up above Kovitsky's head. Kovitsky swiveled about in his chair and looked up. Sure enough, incised in the wood paneling were the words in god we trust. "Church and state!" Herbert cried triumphantly. "You got it carved in the wall over your head!" Larry Kramer : "There's this kid, Henry Lamb, L-A-M-B, eighteen years old, and he's in the intensive-care unit. He came in here last night with a broken wrist. Okay? When he came in here, at least from what's on this sheet of paper, he didn't say nothing about getting hit by a car. It just says he fell. Okay? So they fixed up the broken wrist in the emergency room, and they sent him home. This morning the kid's mother, she brings him back in here, and he's got a concussion, and he goes into a coma, and now they classify him as a likely-to-die. Okay?" "Yeah." "The kid was in the coma by the time they called us, but there's this nurse here that says he told his mother he was hit by a car, a Mercedes, and the car left the scene, and he got a partial license number." "Any witnesses?" "No. This is all from the nurse. We can't even find the mother." "The kid was in the coma by the time they called us, but there's this nurse here that says he told his mother he was hit by a car, a Mercedes, and the car left the scene, and he got a partial license number." this nurse is all excited and breaking my balls about a hit-and-run. --- There it was, the Rome, the Paris, the London of the twentieth century, the city of ambition, the dense magnetic rock, the irresistible destination of all those who insist on being where things are happening—and he was among the victors! He lived on Park Avenue, the street of dreams! He worked on Wall Street, fifty floors up, for the legendary Pierce & Pierce, overlooking the world! He was at the wheel of a $48,000 roadster with one of the most beautiful women in New York—no Comp. Lit. scholar, perhaps, but gorgeous—beside him! A frisky young animal! He was of that breed whose natural destiny it was…to have what they wanted! p.71
"So I don't know exactly how to put it, Reverend Bacon, but the thing is, we—I mean the diocese—the Episcopal Church— we've given you $350,000 as seed money for the Little Shepherd Day Care Center, and we received a telephone call yesterday from a newspaper reporter, and he said the Human Resources Administration turned down your license application nine weeks ago, and I mean, well, we just couldn't believe it. It was the first thing we'd even heard about it, and so . . ." Fiske: "We gave you $350,000 contingent on the licensing of the day-care center. So if you'll turn over the $350,000 or the $340,000, whatever the exact balance is, and let us put it into an escrow account, then we'll help you. We'll go to bat for you." 138 Reverend Bacon looked at him distractedly, as if pondering a great decision. "That money is mostly ... committed." "If you don't mind, how much of the money remains in your hands, Reverend Bacon, whether committed or not?" "None of it," said Reverend Bacon. "None of it? How can that be?" "This was seed money. We had to sow the seed. Some of it fell on fallow ground." "The diocese will — there'll have to be an audit," said Fiske. "Right away."p.140 "Oh yes," said Reverend Bacon. "There'll be an audit. I'll give you an audit. . . right away. I'm gonna tell you something. I'm gonna tell you something about capitalism north of Ninetysixth Street. Why do you people think you're investing all this money, your $350,000, in a day-care center in Harlem? Why are you?" Fiske said nothing. Reverend Bacon's Socratic dialogues made him feel childish and helpless. But Bacon insisted. "Now, you go ahead and tell me. I want to hear it from you. Like you say, we're going to have an audit. An audit. I want to hear it from you in your own words. Why are you people investing all this money in a day-care center in Harlem? Why?" Fiske couldn't hold out any longer. "Because day-care centers are desperately needed in Harlem," he said, feeling about six years old.
"No, my friend," said Bacon softly, "that is not why. If you people were that worried about the children, you would build the day-care center yourself and hire the best professional people to work in it, people with experience. You wouldn't even talk about hiring the people of the streets. What do the people of the streets know about running a day-care center? No, my friend, you're investing in something else. You're investing in steam control. And you're getting value for money. Value for money." "Steam control?" "Steam control. It's a capital investment. It's a very good one. You know what capital is? You think it's something you own, don't you. You think it's factories and machines and buildings and land and things you can sell and stocks and money and banks and corporations. You think it's something you own, because you always owned it. You owned all this land." He waved his arm back toward the bay window and the gloomy back yard and the three sycamore trees. "You owned all the land, and out there, out there in ... Kansas ... and ... Oklahoma ... everybody just lined up, and they said, 'On the mark, get set, go!' and a whole lot of white people started running, and there was all this land, and all they had to do was get to it and stand on it, and they owned it, and their white skin was their deed of property ... see ... The red man, he was in the way, and he was eliminated. The yellow man, he could lay rails across it, but then he was shut up in Chinatown. And the black man, he was in chains the whole time anyway. And so you owned it all, and you still own it, and so you think capital is owning things. But you are mistaken. Capital is controlling things. Controlling things. You want land in Kansas? You want to exercise your white deed of property? First you got to control Kansas ... see ... Controlling things. I don't suppose you ever worked in a boiler room. I worked in a boiler room. People own the boilers, but that don't do 'em a bit of good unless they know how to control the steam ... see ... If you can't control ... the steam, then it's Powder Valley for you and your whole gang. If you ever see a steam boiler go out of control, then you see a whole lot of people running for their lives. And those people, they are not thinking about that boiler as a capital asset, they are not thinking about the return on their investment, they are not thinking about the escrow accounts and the audits and the prudent thing ... see ... They are saying, 'Great God almighty, I lost control,' and they are running for their lives. They're trying to save their very hides." "You see this house?" He gestured vaguely toward the ceiling. "This house was built in the year nineteen hundred and six by a man named Stanley Lightfoot Bowman. Lightfoot. Turkish towels and damask tablecloths, wholesale, Stanley Lightfoot Bowman. He sold those Turkish towels and damask tablecloths in job lots. He spent almost a half a million dollars on this house in nineteen hundred and six ... see ... The man's initials, S.L.B., they're down there made of bronze, going all the way up the stairs, instead a spindles. This was the place to be in nineteen hundred and six. They built these big houses all the way up the West Side, starting at Seventy-second Street, all the way up here. Yeah, and I bought this house from a—from a Jewish fellow—in nineteen hundred and seventy-eight for sixty-two thousand dollars, and that fellow was happy to get that money. He was licking his chops and saying, 'I got some—some fool to give me sixty-two thousand dollars for that place.' Well, what happened to all those Stanley Lightfoot Bowmans? Did they lose their money? No, they lost control ... see ... They lost control north of Ninety-sixth Street, and when they lost control, they lost the capital. You understand? All that capital, it vanished off the face of the earth. The house was still there, but the capital, it vanished ... see ... So what I'm telling you is, you best be waking up. You're practicing the capitalism of the future, and you don't even know it. You're not investing in a day-care center for the children of Harlem. You're investing in the souls ... the souls ... of the people who've been in Harlem too long to look at it like children any longer, people who've grown up with a righteous anger in their hearts and a righteous steam building up in their souls, ready to blow. A righteous steam. When you people come up here and talk about 'minority contractors' and 'minority hiring' and day-care centers for the street people, of the street people, and by the street people, you're humming the right tune, but you don't want to sing the right words. You don't want to come right out and say it: 'Please, dear Lord, God almighty, let'm do what they want with the money, just so long's it controls the steam ... before it's too late ... Well, you go ahead and have your audit and talk to your HRA and reorganize your boards and cross all the t's and dot all the i's. Meantime, I've done your investing for you, and thanks to me, you're already ahead of the game ... Oh, conduct your audit! ... But the time is coming when you will say: 'Thank God. Thank God! Thank God we entered the money on the books Reverend Bacon's way!' Because I'm the conservative, whether you know it or not. You don't know who's out there on those wild and hungry streets. I am your prudent broker on Judgment Day. Harlem, the Bronx, and Brooklyn, they're gonna blow, my friend, and on that day, how grateful you will be for your prudent broker ... your prudent broker ... who can control the steam. Oh yes. On that day, the owners of capital, how happy they will be to exchange what they own, how happy they will be to give up their very birthirights, just to control that wild and hungry steam. No, you go on back down, and you say, 'Bishop, I've been uptown, and I'm here to tell you we made a good investment. We found a prudent broker. We're gonna occupy the high ground when it all comes down." p.142
from Lord Buffings "Masque of Red Death" speech [at the Bavardage party] Families, homes, children, the great chain of being, the eternal tide of chromosomes mean nothing to them any longer. They are bound together, and they whirl about one another, endlessly, particles in a doomed atom—and what else could the Red Death be but some sort of final stimulation, the ne plus ultra? p.335
Richard A. Posner in the article The Depiction of Law in the Bonfire of the Vanities (1988) http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2807&context=journal_articles What does the novel tell us about how lay people view the law? I think nothing beyond what is obvious from finer fictional works, such as The Brothers Karamazov and Pickwick Papers: that they expect technicalities to matter (and it is on a technicality that the first indictment against Mc- Coy is dismissed); that they are not surprised when miscarriages of justice occur (McCoy, remember, is innocent of the charges against him, and the real culprits are used as false witnesses by the prosecution); that they expect legal proceedings to be interminable and excruciatingly expensive; and that they are unillusioned about the moral and intellectual qualities of judges, lawyers, jurors, and other participants in the machinery of legal justice, and about the corrosion of that machinery by political and personal ambitions and fears. Judge Kovitsky does get to make a Law Day speech to Larry Kramer: "What makes you think you can come before the bench waving the banner of community pressure? The law is not a creature of the few or of the many. The court is not swayed by your threats" (p. 676). But Kovitsky is duly punished for his independence: he is denied renomination. ---blurb The #1 bestseller that will forever define late-twentieth-century New York style. "No one has portrayed New York Society this accurately and devastatingly since Edith Wharton" (The National Review)