Book Review: The Bonfire Of The Vanities by Tom Wolfe

I am not the type to read nonfiction or long poems, but i do read a lot of books. Looking at a book presents my mind with a challenge especially with big volumes. I know what you are thinking, "Oh you have a lot of time on your hands" but that isn't the case. I do not have a lot of time but just as many watch movies or series all night long, i prefer to read books all night long (if i can). I was about eight years old when i read my first book; The Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939) it was entitled. It was a large print if my memory serves me right and it took me about two months to finish it. "What was i doing with such a book at that tender point in time?", you might ask. Like most Entebbe kids back then, I was subjected to mandatory long morning hours at the library. "Read, dont just stay home to watch Cartoon network", they said. Read, we did but not what they wanted us to read. Soon it became an unbreakable habit and to this date I have read about, give or take 95 books. Enough about me, let's talk Tom Wolfe - the Man in a White suit

You've not read books until you read a Tom Wolfe novel, that was the saying back in the day. With his unique style of writing and narratives, Tom is a class apart - delivering the type of fiction still strangely absent in today's literature. You can look through thousands of books but you won't find any like his and he has a few. The Bonfire Of The Vanities was his eleventh book but it is his first novel, before that, he had written a few nonfiction works like 'The Right Stuff" (1979) 'The Electronic Kool-Acid Test' (1968) and The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (1965). The Bonfire Of The Vanities, was written at a time when black vs white was a question every author tackled one way or another, Tom brilliantly tackles the issue without making the book feel like another one of those darn racist books, with the same detailed on-scene reporting you only find in his works. It is more than just the black and white issue, it is a deeply researched book about New York - It is New York in a way you have never seen before. He is different and being different is often misunderstood by many. It takes a certain amount of bravery to do something that's never been done before especially for a writer. Although, The Bonfire Of The Vanities didn't sell as many copies as A Man In Full but if i had to pick, i would definitely go with it. Gracious, both are good books reinforcing Tom's reputation as the best chronicler of the American way of life.

You have the rich Sherman McCoy and the poor Mrs Lamb representing two races in real time. Tom hides nothing as he gives you the feel of the rich air of Park Avenue and the deep projects of the Bronx. With each character being portrayed as a unique and separate individual with thoughts that don't have to relate to the story at hand, giving you much more to look forward to with every turn of a page. It is sad how books are reduced to pocket-size volumes unlike the original large volumes. Reading a pocket-size volume of Tom Wolfe's works is a crime as you are denying yourself the chance to read more from a crazy writer. The novel opens with a Black crowd attacking the Mayor and later on throwing him out of Harlem. The news of this event is received differently amongst the different characters that soon grow on you as you read farther into the novel.  Characters like; Sherman McCoy, a Wall Street broker who considers himself to be a Master of the Universe; Larry Kramer, an Assistant District Attornery and his obsession with the lady with brown lipstick; Peter Fallow, a struggling alcoholic working for the Daily Light; Reverend Bacon, a conniving Reverend who spends most of his time using his Church for his own personal benefit...and so many more supporting characters. I'm not going to spoil the book for you but here's an excerpt from the book.

"The world was upside down. what was he, a master of the universe, doing down here on the floor, reduced to ransacking his brain for white lies to circumvent the sweet logic of his wife? The Masters of the Universe were a set of lurid, rapacious plastic dolls that his otherwise perfect daughter liked to play with. They looked like Norse gods who lifted weights, and they had names such as Dracon, Ahor, Mangelred, and Blutong. they were unusually vulgar, even for plastic toys. Yet one fine day, in a fit of euphoria, after he had picked up the telephone and taken an order for zero-coupon bonds that had brought him $50000 commission, just like that, this very phrase had bubbled up into his brain. On wall street he and a few others - how many?- three hundred, four hundred, five hundred?- had become precisely that... Masters of the universe. There was...no limit whatsoever! Naturally he had never so much as whispered this phrase to a living soul. He was no fool. Yet he couldn't get it out of his head. And here he was the Master of the universe, on the floor with a dog, hog-tied by sweetness, guilt, and logic...Why couldn't he (being a Master of the universe) simply explain it to her? Look Judy, i still love you and i love our daughter and i love our home and i love our life, and i dont want to change any of it- its just that i, a Master of the universe, a young man still in the season of the rising sap, deserves more from time to time, when the spirit moves me-..."

Find the book in your local book stores or order it from the various online stores you have access to. I am not an e-book fanatic, i have quite a number of books downloaded but i doubt i will ever read them. I know it must be quite hard given that the books are old as compared to what y'all folks like to read nowadays. Old books are golden treasures; the older the book, the better the quality of writing. These days everything is commercialised and authors/writers are writing to get more sales hence releasing about three books in a single year. It makes good business sense to capitalise on your success especially when you have a few good books out there but it ruins the quality of your writings. Look at Girsham, Stephen King, James Patterson, Seldon, their first books were marvels but as time went by, the quality of the stories deteriorated.