Maria says no on both counts as they retreat back to the rent-controlled love nest she illegally rents. As they race away, McCoy speculates on whether they really hit anyone and whether they should report the incident. Maria, now in the driver seat, backs up, hits one of the youths, and flees with Sherman. Assuming they have designs to rob him, he throws some of the junk at them. When he confronts a ramp cluttered with debris, he exits the car to clear it, only to find two African-American youths approaching him. The heart of the story unfolds when Sherman picks Maria up from JFK airport, takes a wrong exit into “Fort Apache” Bronx instead of Manhattan, and ventures through the borough that proves to be his heart of darkness.
Yet as smart as McCoy affects, he is not sly enough to master the ability to hide his affair from his wife. Her name? Maria Ruskin, a young blonde bombshell from the south, who is married to the elder and quite wealthy Arthur Ruskin. He drives a sleek black Mercedes, and of course, he has a girl friend on the side.
He is a Wall Street bond financier at Pierce and Pierce who lived with his wife and daughter at 816 Park Ave in a 14-room co-op featured in Architectural Digest. A self-described “master of the universe” because of his ability to sell bonds and make millions of dollars, almost effortlessly, he gives a poster child face to the “Greed is good” mantra of the Gordon Gecko Wall Street of the 80s.
Originally published in 1987, THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES tells the story of a hapless Sherman McCoy. Yet underlying this dramatic farce is a powerful story about race and class in the criminal justice system. One finds in this Tom Wolfe novel Wall Street crooks, overzealous headline-grabbing prosecutors, ambitious muckraking reporters, and opportunistic preachers. Email: Dschultz .Ī period novel from the headlines of the 1980s, THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES overwhelms readers with all the drama, greed, ego, and excess of that decade with characters reminiscent of real life players in New York City. Reviewed by David Schultz, Graduate School of Management, Hamline University.
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