The Bonfire of the Vanities (Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Tom Wolfe
- First Published: 1987
- Type of Plot: Social realism
- Time of Work: The 1980’s
- Setting: New York City
- Principal Characters: Sherman McCoy, Judy McCoy, Maria Ruskin, Peter Fallow, Lawrence Kramer, Thomas Killian, Judge Myron Kovitsky, Reverend Reginald Bacon
- Genres: Long fiction, Social realism
- Subjects: New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., United States or Americans, Journalism or journalists, Class conflict, New York City, 1980’s, Poverty or poor people, Greed, Corruption, Newspapers, Wealth, Reporting or reporters, Wall Street
- Locales: New York, NY
The Novel
In The Bonfire of the Vanities, an upper-middle-class white Wall Street investment banker who thinks he is on top of the world discovers that his fragile world is in imminent danger of destruction from within. At age thirty-eight, Sherman McCoy is near the peak of his career. He is married and has one young daughter whom he loves but rarely sees because of his hectic double life. In addition to being absorbed in business, he maintains an adulterous relationship with a sexy blonde who is having fun while waiting for her elderly multimillionaire husband to...
[The entire page is 2377 words long]
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