The Bonfire of the Vanities   by Tom Wolfe

Spring, 2005.     On loan from one of the dressingroom matrons, Ulla Moltrecht.

I've taken a few months completing this book, because it doesn't really hold my interest. So, I left it in the theater, to read only when there were pauses between rehearsals, or when I've got a lot of waiting around to do in a performance. The story is about a Upper class, rather rich, Wall-street so-and-so. -Who hits a young black boy with his car, one night while having an affair. And then his whole life goes to hell, and he loses everything, except for his humanity, (Which, I suppose the point of the book is: he Gains. He becomes a compassionate and Real human, only with this disaster of his life.)

The thing I most disliked, was the depressing, seedy side that it showed of Everyone. Without respite. If they are not low-lifes, they are cowards. If they are not racist, they are insensitive. If they are not whores, they are profiteers. What a depressing book. (Not as depressing and unwholesome as I found American Psycho, but still not pleasing.) I didn't find it informative, revealing or surprising that there is such low baseness in people, (Was this book written in a time when people still believed that those with Money were honest, and good people? In a time when those who appeared to be fighting for the rights of others would never have ulterior motives?) Its just a sordid tale of sordid lives, and everyone working to turn the central tragedy to their own advantage.

I didn't find any great thought, or idea, or insights in this book. Not even mediocre ones. As I said, there's a good chance that the author's point, which came only in the last three pages of the 730, is that only after the trial, and the great emotional... destruction, was the protagonist able to be reborn, and find a new, more durable strength for himself. But... this was too little, after too much character development of all these other horrid people.

For much of the book, I felt ill, and too disgusted to read on. It did nothing but depress me. (Oh god, what a stubborn bastard I must be, that I kept on reading to the end anyhow.) Now that I've chewed it to pieces though, there are a couple of things I ought to say.

Aside from the complaints I've made already, there was nothing wrong with this book. The story line was well presented, and had the right amount of suspense, (Which kept you interested in what would happen next, yet didn't hide everything, so that your interest would diminish to nothing.) The Characters were all well developed, and vivid to greater or lesser degrees. (I just didn't like who these characters were. They were still well presented.) In all, it was well written.

I just didn't enjoy what it had to say.