The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Characters/People edit see section history

• Sherman McCoy: Lead male protagonist. Husband to Judy McCoy and father to Campbell McCoy. A Wall Street bonds trader and self-proclaimed "Master of the Universe". A Yale graduate and member of the rich WASP society. Is involved in an accident with his mistress, Maria Ruskin, that slowly erodes his familiar life and stability.
• Larry Kramer: The zealous and ambitious jewish assistant DA in charge of prosecuting the McCoy case. A married man with a son, he is still obsessed with impressing and chasing other females. Has a fixation with his sternocleidomastoid muscles.
• Tommy Killian: Sherman McCoy's lawyer for the first indictment. A competent and shrewd lawyer, as well as a member of the Irish community.
• Judy McCoy: Sherman McCoy's wife.
• Maria Ruskin: Married to Arthur Ruskin, yet engages in several extra-marital affairs. Her notable affair occurs with Sherman McCoy. Is involved in the accident with Sherman, but is never formally charged by the police or DA.
• Campbell McCoy: The six-year-old daughter of Judy and Sherman McCoy.
• Goldberg: A Bronx police officer and member of the Irish community.
• Kovitsky: NYC Judge assigned to the McCoy case.
• Abe Weiss: The media-obsessed NYC DA up for re-election. Zealously pursues McCoy's conviction in hopes that it will give him more votes from the Bronx community.
• Quigley: Tommy Killian's private investigator.
• Henry Lamb: A young high school student that lives with his mother in the Bronx. Described as a good kid who stays out of trouble. Is hit by Maria Ruskin during the accident and ends up in a coma.
• Bernie Fitzgibbon: Bronx police officer.
• Reverend Reginald Bacon: A media-obsessed mouthpiece for some of the Bronx community members. Fights for justice and equality for Bronx residents but engages in unscrupulous activites to increase his own wealth and power.
• Vogel: Informs Peter Fallow of the Lamb case and is the intermediary between Bacon and the media.
• Peter Fallow: Alcoholic tabloid journalist responsible for breaking the McCoy/Lamb story with Vogel's tip.
• Shelly Thomas: A juror from an unrelated court case, Shelly is the object of pursuit by Larry Kramer.

Quotes edit see section history

• “Said, "Nature is concerned with but one thing: reproduction for the sake of reproduction"”

  Maria Ruskin

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• “A lie may fool someone else, but it tells you the truth: you’re weak.”

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• And now that boy, that good actor, had grown old and fragile and tired, wearier than ever at the thought of trying to hoist the Protector’s armor back onto his shoulders again, now, so far down the line.

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• And in that moment Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later. For the first time he realized that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps, love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life.

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• He was experiencing the resentment of those who discover that, despite their own grave condition, the world goes on about its business, heartless, without even so much as a long face.

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• Your self…is other people, all the people you’re tied to, and it’s only a thread.”

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• In well-reared girls and boys, guilt and the instinct to obey the rules are reflexes, ineradicable ghosts in the machine.

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• The dog knows when it’s time to turn into an animal and fight.”

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• “He’s like the bat. You know the fable of the bat? The birds and the beasts were having a war. As long as the birds were winning, the bat says he’s a bird, because he can fly. When the beasts were winning, the bat says he’s a beast, because he got teeth. That’s why the bat don’t come out in the daytime. Don’t nobody want to look at his two faces.”

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• he was learning for himself the truth of the saying “A liberal is a conservative who has been arrested.”

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• Like more than one Englishman in New York, he looked upon Americans as hopeless children whom Providence had perversely provided with this great swollen fat fowl of a continent. Any way one chose to relieve them of their riches, short of violence, was sporting, if not morally justifiable, since they would only squander it in some tasteless and useless fashion, in any event.

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First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Tom Wolfe (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. John Lithgow (Reader)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Ambassador Book Award (1988: Fiction)
• National Book Critics Circle Award (Finalist, 1987: Fiction)
• Audie Award (2010: Fiction)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 813.54

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Authors, A-Z › ( W ) › Wolfe, Tom
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary

Movie Connections edit see section history

• Bonfire of the Vanities (IMDb)