Rating: 
Summary: Great style, interesting characters, but what's the point?
Review: Wolfe's innovative descriptions of the '80s New York culture is the strength of this novel, yet is not enough to excuse the completely disappointing epilogue. Apparently pulled from another story, this ending contradicts all evidence and character development that 99% of the wordage strove to build. Attempts at making a statement about racism, politics, and justice is thrown out in leiu of a disappointing synopsis that downplays every sympathetic character while the story's villians prosper against all reason. The epilogue offers no resolution, and thus, makes no statement. Imagine sitting through every day of the O.J. Simpson trial and being deprived of a verdict. Fortunately, Wolfe's style makes the bulk of the reading easy enough to digest, but in the end you have to wonder why this book was ever written.
Rating: 
Summary: BRILLIANT IN EVERY WAY EXCEPT THE ENDING
Review: UNTIL THE ENDING/EPILOGUE THIS WAS "THE BEST BOOK I EVER READ." UNBELIEVABLY SUSPENSFUL AND INSIGHTFUL, MY HEART WAS ACTUALLY POUNDING WHILE I READ THE BOOK. BUT MR. WOLFE SHOULD HAVE STOPPED BEFORE THE EPILOGUE. TO THAT POINT A POWERFUL STATEMENT HAD BEEN MADE AND SHERMAN MCCOY AND HAD BEEN EXONERATED FROM A CRIME HE DID NOT COMMIT. AFTER THE EPILOGUE, THERE IS NO CONCLUSIVE ENDING, ALTHOUGH IT IS OBVIOUS, THAT IN FEAR OF BAD REACTIONS FROM THE BLACKS, MR. WOLFE HAS WEASELED OUT AND MADE IT APPARENT THAT THE LAWYERLESS MR. MCCOY WOULD LIKELY BE UNJUSTLY CONVICTED AND SPEND 8 TO 25 IN JAIL AND MARIA, THE GOLDDIGGER AND REAL CRIMINAL WOULD ROAM THE WORLD UNSCATHED.
Rating:
Summary: Where have you gone, Tom Wolfe?
Review: Damn it, Tom. You wrote the novel of the decade. Do it again! This work stands beside the works of Drieser, Fitzgerald, Salinger, Lewis, Heller, and Pynchon. That must scare you. Please do not be afraid: work, stand, and deliver. Do not be fear failure, for you have already had success which will far outlive you. Review: this was the "novel of the eighties" which will be "studied" as such. Mr. Wolfe's writings are an admixture of Sinclair Lewis and Hunter Thompson, yet unique. It is such fun to read and, then again, to re-read for texture and content. If you have seen the movie, please forgive the author for "selling the rights".
Rating:
Summary: "Boomer-Man": Tom Wolfe's Modern Everyman in Bonfire Hell
Review: If F. Scott Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby was the Modern-Man of his generation, Tom Wolf's everyman hero in "Bonfire of the Vanities is our Boomer man," the guy who can't quite make ends meet on 998,000 bucks a year. Although Wolfe is best known for his "new journalism" stethopscopic view of America in works like "Electric Acid Cool Aid Test" and "The Pump House Gang," his first foray into the land of the novel is novel indeed. Bonfire is a hybrid of novel and journalism with a pinch of Woody Allen. Wolfe's "social X-rays" scavenge cosmopolitan Manhattan cocktail parties as the vultures of the downtown poverty industry exploit a yuppie faux pas that sends his Boomer hero into a crashing Sartrean abyss.
Angular as a spaghetti Western, zanier than Monty Python, and truer than Sinclair Lewis, Mr. Wolf's excursion as a novelist leaves us wondering why he doesn't do more. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition
Rating:
Summary: An incredible display of writing that left me in awe.
Review: "The Bonfire of the Vanities" will be on any self-respecting literature professor's syllabus in the year 2050.
"Students," he or she will thunder, "this book is an incredible example of flawlessly crafted writing by one of the 20th century's greatest authors. Wolfe's keen social observations of life in the 1980s will prove instructive - yet emminently enjoyable - as you are treated to one of the most perceptive, scathing summations of American society that has been written since the days of Mark Twain."
"Thankfully," we can hope the professor will conclude, "we have long since risen above the era of greed, shallowness and opportunism that is portrayed so aptly in this novel."
Rating:
Summary: Kicks New York's butt
Review: Some say that there is a bit of sadist in everyone. Thiscertainly is my case, since I reveled in the somewhat perversepleasure of reading this book and watching the spectacular fall of Sherman McCoy, the central figure.
Bonfire of the Vanities is a book about New York in the late 1980s, when bond traders like McCoy ruled the universe. I understand that it has become a cliche to say that the novel is better than the movie. In this case, however, the disparity is so great that I would actually recommend you see the movie.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Novel Written in the 1980s
Review: Tom Wolfe, most noted for his off-beat brand of journalism
in the 1960s and 1970s is brilliant in his assualt of
New York City politics and lifetsyles as he saw them in the
1980s. He shows us New York City from the perspective of Wall Street wizards, lawyers, mayors, civil rights leaders, journalists, and anyone who gets in between. The book is quite witty and descriptive. It will surely go down as the best chronicle of the lifestyles of the 1980s
Rating: 
Summary: uhh..?
Review: This book is so incredibly overrated its sickening. its mainstream tripe for the philistine reader of our age. But I give this 2 stars instead of one, only because I suppose it will be good treadmill exercise for the reader that doesn't read much and wants to make themselves feel literate.
Rating:
Summary: i had to read this book for class.
Review: i thought it was pretty good. sometimes tom wolfe's writing style really got on my nerves, especially when he tried to turn sounds into words. "shuhmun" was okay but "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeghhhhhhhhhhhh" took it a lil bit too far. if you knowhumsayin'.
Rating:
Summary: Like the literary equivalent of the Cheesecake Factory
Review: ... this book has all the trappings of class while never surrendering its large-scale consumer appeal as "fiction." BOTV has several dimensions - on one level, it's a satirical look at the dog-eat-dog world of upper-crust 1980s NYC, where power, greed and rabid statusmongering are the rule. Even if you just stay on that level, Bonfire is a great read - alternately very funny and sobering, though the prevailing dismal view of human nature may depress you.
On another level, BOTV has something to say about American society, human nature and, I think, the nature of desires themselves. Even the most hard-nosed conservative will wince at Wolfe's unrelentingly cynical view of black "civil rights leaders" who invariably turn out to be corrupt (interestingly, BOTV has not a single positive black character - unless you count Lamb, who's dead). And even liberals like me cringe at his description of made-for-TV "mass demonstrations" orchestrated by know-nothing urbanites.
Political sensibilities aside however, BOTV shows that even those who seem one-dimensionally "bad" to their antagonists often have at least a glimmer of decency. It's also a poignant commentary on what desires are real and which ones are products of the lives we lead; the hope for love versus the longing for exotic and dapper clothes, for instance. If you wanna think about it, this book can do us all a lot of good.
... and heck, if you don't, it's still a good way to kill some time.
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