The Bonfire of the Vanities
Steam Control
[Reprinted from Issues & Views Winter 1989]
Is it possible for a book this entertaining to be one of the most discerning
social chronicles of our times? One reviewer calls it, "Indisputably on
target." And indeed it is. In fact, in his novel The Bonfire of the
Vanities, Tom Wolfe hits the bulls eye on all of his targets. Through his eyes
we see more clearly the arrogant pretensions of the smugly privileged, the
cynical manipulation of racial animosities by ambitious bureaucrats, a
hopelessly perverted judicial system, and the exploitation of one and all by a
disdainful and predatory media. It's all set against a background of struggle
for political power in New York City's Bronx.
Wolfe has turned his critical probe and X-ray vision on contemporary
American life before. At the peak of 1960s radicalism, he brought his very
special brand of analysis to Radical Chic, his devastating description of
conductor Leonard Bernstein's ever-so-trendy fundraising cocktail party for the
Black Panthers, and to Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, in which he stripped bare
the militant poverty claque, which was already becoming an entrenched class by
l970.
The Bonfire of the Vanities revolves around a car accident on an expressway
in the Bronx. The passengers are two lovers, the rich Wall Street bond trader,
Sherman McCoy, and the voluptuous Maria Ruskin--both very married to other
people. The accident is precipitated by two black youths--one a hardened,
recidivist criminal and the other a novice who is being shown the ropes.
From there, Wolfe takes us on a breathless, hilarious tour of Pierce &
Pierce, a top Wall Street investment banking firm, on to the city room of a
lurid New York City tabloid, then to the Harlem domain of the wily Reverend
Bacon, and finally into the bowels of the Bronx County courthouse where we
observe the dispensers of justice at work. Or, to put it in other words, where
we watch the system do a number on Sherman McCoy.
Wolfe has said that a novelist's job is to observe the nature of life around
him, which is mainly determined by a society's status structure. The clash of
class is at the heart of "Bonfire." In his breezy, witty and
thoroughly irreverent style, Wolfe demolishes modish icons.
We chuckle at the whining, befuddled white Episcopalian church official
whose church has been duped out of $350,000 by the Heavenly Crusader, the black
Reverend Bacon, for his "Little Shepherd Day Care Center," and sundry
other "programs for the people." We gasp at the vulgarity of the
quintessential Wall Street Yuppy whose $1 million annual salary is not enough
to cover the mounting bills of his opulent lifestyle.
And we shake our heads in dismay at the sham of a judicial system where
prosecutors and defense attorneys engage in a charade based only on what they
can make the facts appear to be, not on anything approximating reality.
One and all play up to the omnipotent media. Wolfe is at his best in showing
how the powerful media actually shapes the very manner in which a legal case is
treated. We observe first hand the now familiar scenario of professional
"activists" and the media feeding off each another.
Anyone who followed the Tawana Brawley case in New York, where Rev. Al
Sharpton played an ongoing game of cat and mouse with the media, will think the
whole Brawley episode was a script concocted by Tom Wolfe. If Bonfire had not
been published more than a year before the Brawley case hit the headlines, one
might think that Wolfe was simply recreating today's events in novel form.
Which, of course, is exactly what he does.
The whole judicial system pants to have a go at McCoy, and is delirious to
have this Great White Defendant fall into their laps--a white man who can be
charged with committing a dastardly crime against a member of the downtrodden
minority. A WASP white man at that. What prosecutor based in the ethnically
populous borough of the Bronx could have dreamed of such a delicious meal? We
watch as Sherman McCoy is ground up like so much chopped meat by district
attorneys, defense attorneys, politicians and the media.
New York's Bernhard Goetz case echoes throughout. Exchange the question of
the book's highway thug, "Yo, need some help?" for the subway thug's
"Give me $5," and you have a good idea of the nature of the implied
threat. You can also better sense the ambivalent fear of the potential victim,
who, in a split second, must assess just what danger he is in, if any.
Wolfe's scathing humor spares none. We're allowed to listen in on a session
familiar to most whites, where the poor white liberal shnook, Larry Kramer, is
trying diligently to watch his words, lest he be pounced upon and branded a
racist by his white peers. For, according to accepted protocol, one must never
be caught committing the Unforgiveable Sin of expressing an uncharitable
thought about certain ethnic groups--no matter that their members, in the tens
of thousands, perpetrate mass mayhem on the public.
Apparently, the outrage is not the horrible social and personal losses
resulting from the crimes of such people. The Unforgivable Sin is thinking
those uncharitable thoughts or asking those unkind questions
about the ethnic groups to which they belong. ("What's wrong with those
people?") Mustn't judge, folks, musn't ever judge! In the real world,
sane, intelligent white people, who know better, not only refuse to challenge
the prescribed orthodoxy, but parrot the cliches of the day, for fear of being
labeled as racist by their fellow whites.
You will recognize every character here, especially the charlatan preacher
man from Harlem, who still babbles in 1960s rhetoric, and whose promiscuous
heap of schemes are all designed to get hold of government "set
asides" for minorities, and whatever other affirmative action perks he can
lay his hands on. Here's Reverend Bacon telling it like it is to the distraught
white church officials, who are desperately seeking some strategy to get back
at least some portion of the small fortune they foolishly handed over to him:
"You're investing in steam control. And you're getting value for
money....People own the boilers, but that don't do 'em a bit of good unless
they know how to control the steam. 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 lot of people running for their lives."
What else were all those post-60s social programs but an anxious government's
attempt at "steam control?"
Readers of Bonfire engage in unexpected outbursts of laughter and knowing
smiles whenever Wolfe thrusts home with yet another of his penetrating
insights. On one level, this is what Bonfire is--a compendium of devastating
insights into where the last 30-odd years of capitulation to every wacky social
demand has brought us. Wolfe masterfully shows up these excesses, while
exposing the beneficiaries of the system. Among others, these beneficiaries are
the aforementioned Reverend Bacon and the disreputable politicians like the
electioneering Bronx District Attorney Abe Weiss, who will build his career on
the racial tensions stemming from the misfortunes of the hapless Sherman McCoy.
Wolfe is brilliant, whether he is sharing his major or minor insights with
us. With his keen sensitivity, he portrays perfectly the well-known gait of
young black males as the "pimp roll," and the obligatory banter of
social climbers at an obscenely lavish Fifth Avenue dinner party. His ability
to catch minute detail and dialogue, and then to recreate them, is matchless.
Wolfe has been called a "novelist with a vengeance" who possesses the
"obstinate detachment of a visitor from Mars." He sees all and
fearlessly tells all.
Copyright © 2001 Issues & Views
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