About The Bonfire of the Vanities and The Wire
Post 1727:
Memory has always been a weird deal with me. I remember some stuff like a superhuman. Some stuff, let’s just say my mental faculties are less than impressive. It’s one of the reasons why I don’t like long books. Too much to remember. I like it short because sometimes I put a book down for weeks before coming back. Anyway, when I started reading The Bonfire of the Vanities, it was months ago. It’s a long one. 700 plus pages, tiny little print. Not my fave.
I never forgot a thing. I’ve read other Tom Wolfe books, but this one is special. He writes a long sentence as good as anyone. Really a master of the English language. Musical, poetic prose. I think he overdoes it sometimes, but that’s arguable. It’s not like he’s writing anything irrelevant. All that happens or is described informs the setting and the characters. New York in the 1980s is flung into your brain as you turn the pages of this one.
Wolfe uses an incident/crime/tragedy that might’ve otherwise gone fairly unnoticed to explore every side of New York. The shady bankers, corrupt politicians, overworked justice system, lying journalists, vapid society types, crooked activists—they’re all thrown together around the story of an encounter between a rich man and woman and a couple of young men in the hard part of town. A kid ends up badly hurt and that should be all that matters. That’s if we lived in a decent world full of selfless people.
Not Wolfe’s world. Everyone is out for themselves, gaming the system. The system is a game, in fact, and if you don’t play it, you get played. I love how Wolfe is able to show how the institutions that hold up a city like New York are shady and hilariously and tragically interconnected. The people at the top are shady and fake and everyone is a liar. Nobody escapes Wolfe’s critique.
In the book world, maybe this is perceived as an attack on New York from the right wing. I’m not sure and I don’t care. I was constantly reminded of The Wire, still probably the greatest show ever made. That put Baltimore’s institutions under the microscope like Tom Wolfe does to New York. Judges and lawyers and crooks and rich and poor, all playing the game. The Bonfire of the Vanities is more absurd and comedic than The Wire, but the basic idea is the same. People up close are full of shit. It’s kinda funny. Kinda sad. It can also be really entertaining. Great stuff. No, I won’t see the movie. They say it sucks. Anyway, cheers and see you after.
