The Bonfire of the Vanities Study Guide

Tom Wolfe was a journalist and novelist who was one of the foremost practitioners of New Journalism, a term he coined to describe journalism in which the writer applies the conventions of fiction to reportage. Wolfe was born in Richmond, Virginia, and attended college at Washington and Lee University. After graduating, he tried out for a spot as a pitcher on the New York Giants but failed to make the team. He then went on to receive his PhD from the American Studies department at Yale University, where he wrote his dissertation about communist activity among American writers from 1929 to 1942. After receiving his PhD, instead of pursuing a career in academia, Wolfe became a reporter, first for the Springfield Union in Springfield, Massachusetts. He then went on to work as a reporter at the Washington Post and the New York Herald Tribune. His first book, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, was a compendium of essays culled from his newspaper and magazine articles and was published in 1965. Wolfe published his next book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, in 1968. The book examines the use of psychedelic drugs among members of the 1960s counterculture and follows the exploits of a group led by Ken Kesey. Wolfe went on to write several other nonfiction books—including The Right Stuff (1979)—before switching to fiction and publishing The Bonfire of the Vanities in 1987. After publishing The Bonfire of the Vanities, Wolfe continued to write nonfiction as well as more works of fiction, including the novels A Man in Full (1998), I Am Charlotte Simmons (2004), and Back to Blood (2012).

The title of the novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, references the historical bonfire of the vanities, a 1497 event during which followers of a Dominican friar in Italy named Girolama Savonarola threw objects of so-called vanity and sin—including clothes, makeup, and artwork—into a bonfire. The rationale behind the event was that those so-called vanities distracted one from one’s religious life and duties. The Bonfire of the Vanities takes place in New York City during the 1980s while Ronald Reagan is president. A stock market boom occurred in the early 80s, and that boom led to the so-called “greed is good” era on Wall Street, a reference to the protagonist Gordon Gecko’s motto in the 1987 film Wall Street. The novel, then, occurs during that stock market boom and follows Sherman, a bond trader on Wall Street. The story of the novel is also loosely based on and shares similarities with the racist murders of two Black men by White mobs in New York City during the 1980s—namely, the murders of Willie Turks in 1982 and Michael Griffith in 1986. When Michael Griffith was murdered, a White mob chased him and three other Black men from a pizzeria, and Griffith was then hit by a car on the Belt Parkway as he fled. That death led to a highly publicized trial, and civil rights leader Al Sharpton led a series of high-profile protests related to the crime. The driver of the car was not charged with a crime, but those in the mob were arrested, and the leaders of the mob were charged with second-degree murder. Ultimately, nine people were convicted of crimes related to the murder, and the three principal defendants were found guilty of second-degree manslaughter and first-degree assault.

Tom Wolfe was a prolific nonfiction writer. Some of his most well-known works of nonfiction include The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, about psychedelic use in the 1960s counterculture, and The Right Stuff, about high-speed aircraft and the first NASA astronauts. Wolfe coined the term New Journalism to describe his and other’s writing at the time. According to Wolfe, New Journalism emphasizes applying the techniques of fiction to nonfiction writing. That includes depicting vivid characters and scenes as well as recreating dialogue and utilizing dramatic tension to tell nonfictional stories. Other writers who are often considered among the cohort who wrote New Journalism include Hunter S. Thompson, Truman Capote, and Joan Didion. In 1989, Wolfe published an article in Harper’s titled “Staking the Billion-Footed Beast” in which he explained that he wanted to write fiction because he found a dearth of social realist novels exploring the most important and impactful events of the day. He held up Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, and John Steinbeck as past paragons of the kind of sweeping social realist novels he prized. Some of Zola’s most well-known novels include Germinal and Thérèse Raquin, while some of the best-known works of Dicken include A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, and Oliver Twist. Steinbeck is perhaps best known for his novels The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden as well as his novella Of Mice and Men. Like The Bonfire of the Vanities, Wolfe’s second novel, A Man in Full, also touches on themes of race, class, and status.