The Bonfire of the Vanities

by Tom Wolfe

  You did a great job yesterday. And I want you to keep pouring it on.

  “Christ, I wonder what time it is,” said Weiss. “I’m getting hungry.”

  Kramer looked at his watch with alacrity. “Almost 12:15.”

  “Whyn’t you stick around and have lunch? Judge Tonneto’s coming by, and this guy from the Times, Overton Something-or-other—I always forget, they’re all named Overton or Clifton or some fucking name like that—and Bobby Vitello and Lew Weintraub. You know Lew Weintraub? No? Stick around. You’ll learn something.”

  “Well, if you’re sure…”

  “Of course!” Weiss motioned toward his gigantic conference table, as if to say there’s plenty of room. “Just ordering in some sandwiches.”

  He said this as if this happened to be one of those spur-of-the-moment lunches where you order in instead of going out, as if he or any other shepherd from the island fortress dared stroll out amid the flock and have lunch in the civic center of the Bronx.

  But Kramer banished all cheap cynicism from his thoughts. Lunch with the likes of Judge Tonneto, Bobby Vitello, Lew Weintraub, the real-estate developer, Overton Whichever Wasp of The New York Times, and the district attorney himself!

  He was emerging from the anonymous ooze.

  Thank God for the Great White Defendant. Thank you, God, for Mr. Sherman McCoy.

  With a blink of curiosity, he wondered about McCoy. McCoy wasn’t much older than he was. How did this little icy dip into the real world feel to a Wasp who had had everything just the way he wanted it all his life? But it was only that, a blink.

  The Bororo Indians, a primitive tribe who live along the Vermelho River in the Amazon jungles of Brazil, believe that there is no such thing as a private self. The Bororos regard the mind as an open cavity, like a cave or a tunnel or an arcade, if you will, in which the entire village dwells and the jungle grows. In 1969 José M. R. Delgado, the eminent Spanish brain physiologist, pronounced the Bororos correct. For nearly three millennia, Western philosophers had viewed the self as something unique, something encased inside each person’s skull, so to speak. This inner self had to deal with and learn from the outside world, of course, and it might prove incompetent in doing so. Nevertheless, at the core of one’s self there was presumed to be something irreducible and inviolate. Not so, said Delgado. “Each person is a transitory composite of materials borrowed from the environment.” The important word was transitory, and he was talking not about years but about hours. He cited experiments in which healthy college students lying on beds in well-lit but soundproofed chambers, wearing gloves to reduce the sense of touch and translucent goggles to block out specific sights, began to hallucinate within hours. Without the entire village, the whole jungle, occupying the cavity, they had no minds left.

  He cited no investigations of the opposite case, however. He did not discuss what happens when one’s self—or what one takes to be one’s self—is not a mere cavity open to the outside world but has suddenly become an amusement park to which everybody, todo el mundo, tout le monde, comes scampering, skipping, and screaming, nerves a-tingle, loins aflame, ready for anything, all you’ve got, laughs, tears, moans, giddy thrills, gasps, horrors, whatever, the gorier the merrier. Which is to say, he told us nothing of the mind of a person at the center of a scandal in the last quarter of the twentieth century.

  At first, in the weeks following the incident in the Bronx, Sherman McCoy had regarded the press as an enemy that was stalking him out there. He feared each day’s newspapers and news broadcasts the way a man would fear the weapons of any impersonal and unseen enemy, the way he would fear falling bombs or incoming shells. Even yesterday, outside the Central Booking facility, in the rain and the filth, when he saw the whites of their eyes and the yellow of their teeth and they reviled and taunted and baited him, when they did everything short of trampling and spitting upon him, they were still the enemy out there. They had closed in for the kill, and they hurt him and humiliated him, but they could not reach his inviolable self, Sherman McCoy, inside the brass crucible of his mind.

  They closed in for the kill. And then they killed him.

  He couldn’t remember whether he had died while he was still standing in line outside, before the door to Central Booking opened, or while he was in the pens. But by the time he left the building and Killian held his impromptu press conference on the steps, he had died and been reborn. In his new incarnation, the press was no longer an enemy and it was no longer out there. The press was now a condition, like lupus erythematosus or Wegener’s granulomatosis. His entire central nervous system was now wired into the vast, incalculable circuit of radio and television and newspapers, and his body surged and burned and hummed with the energy of the press and the prurience of those it reached, which was everyone, from the closest neighbor to the most bored and distant outlander titillated for the moment by his disgrace. By the thousands, no, the millions, they now came scampering into the cavity of what he had presumed to be his self, Sherman McCoy. He could no more keep them from entering his very own hide than he could keep the air out of his lungs. (Or, better said, he could keep them out only in the same manner that he could deny air to his lungs once and for all. That solution occurred to him more than once during that long day, but he fought against morbidity, he did, he did, he did, he who had already died once.)

  It started within minutes after he and Killian managed to disengage themselves from the mob of demonstrators and reporters and photographers and camera crews and get into the car-service sedan Killian had hired. The driver was listening to an Easy Listening station on the car radio, but in no time the every-half-hour news broadcast came on, and right away Sherman heard his name, his name and all the key words that he would hear and see over and over for the rest of the day: Wall Street, socialite, hit-and-run, Bronx honor student, unidentified female companion, and he could see the driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror staring into the open cavity known as Sherman McCoy. By the time they reached Killian’s office, the midday edition of The City Light was already there, and his contorted face was staring back at him from the front page, and everyone in New York was free to walk right in through those horrified eyes of his. Late in the afternoon, when he went home to Park Avenue, he had to run a gauntlet of reporters and television camera crews to get into his own apartment building. They called him “Sherman,” as merrily and contemptuously and imperiously as they pleased, and Eddie, the doorman, looked into his eyes and stuck his head way down into the cavity. To make matters worse, he had to ride up on the elevator with the Morrisseys, who lived in the penthouse apartment. They said nothing. They just poked their long noses inside the cavity and sniffed and sniffed at his shame, until their faces stiffened from the stench. He had counted on his unlisted telephone number as a retreat, but the press had already solved that, by the time he got home, and Bonita, kind Bonita, who took only a quick peek inside the cavity, had to screen the calls. Every imaginable news organization called, and there were a few calls for Judy. And for himself? Who would be so deficient in dignity, so immune to embarrassment, as to make a personal telephone call to this great howling public arcade, this shell of shame and funk, which was Sherman McCoy himself? Only his mother and father and Rawlie Thorpe. Well, at least Rawlie had that much in him. Judy—roaming the apartment shocked and distant. Campbell—bewildered but not in tears; not yet. He hadn’t thought he would be able to face the television screen, and yet he turned it on. The vilification poured forth from every channel. Prominent Wall Street investment banker, top echelon at Pierce & Pierce, socialite, prep school, Yale, spoiled son of the former general partner of Dunning Sponget & Leach, the Wall Street law firm, in his $60,000 Mercedes sports roadster (now an extra $10,000), with a foxy brunette who was not his wife and not anything like his wife and who makes his wife look dowdy by comparison, runs over an exemplary son of the deserving poor, a young honor student who grew up in the housing projects, and flees in his fancy car without so much as a moment’s pity,
let alone help, for his victim, who now lies near death. The eerie thing was—and it felt eerie as he had sat there looking at the television set—was that he was not shocked and angered by these gross distortions and manifest untruths. Instead, he was shamed. By nightfall they had been repeated so often, on the vast circuit to which his very hide now seemed wired, that they had taken on the weight of truth, in that millions had now seen this Sherman McCoy, this Sherman McCoy on the screen, and they knew him to be the man who had committed the heartless act. They were here now, in vast mobs, clucking and fuming and probably contemplating worse than that, inside the public arcade that he had once thought to be the private self of Sherman McCoy. Everyone, every living soul who gazed upon him, with the possible exception of Maria, if she ever gazed upon him again, would know him as this person on the front of two million, three million, four million newspapers and on the screen of God knew how many million television sets. The energy of their accusations, borne over the vast circuit of the press, which was wired into his central nervous system, hummed and burned through his hide and made his adrenaline pump. His pulse was constantly fast, and yet he was no longer in a state of panic. A sad, sad torpor had set in. He could concentrate on…nothing, not even long enough to feel sad about it. He thought of what this must be doing to Campbell and to Judy, and yet he no longer felt the terrible pangs he felt before…before he died. This alarmed him. He looked at his daughter and tried to feel the pangs, but it was an intellectual exercise. It was all so sad and heavy, heavy, heavy.

  The one thing he truly felt was fear. It was the fear of going back in there.

  Last night, exhausted, he went to bed and thought he would be unable to sleep. In fact, he fell asleep almost at once and had a dream. It was dusk. He was on a bus going up First Avenue. This was odd, because he had not taken a bus in New York for at least ten years. Before he knew it, the bus was up around 110th Street, and it was dark. He had missed his stop, although he couldn’t remember what his stop was supposed to be. He was now in a black neighborhood. In fact, it should have been a Latin neighborhood, namely, Spanish Harlem, but it was a black neighborhood. He got off the bus, fearing that if he stayed on, things would only get worse. In doorways, on stoops, on the sidewalks he could see figures in the gloom, but they hadn’t seen him yet. He hurried along the streets in the shadows, trying to make his way west. Good sense would have told him to head straight back down First Avenue, but it seemed terribly important to head west. Now he realized the figures were circling. They said nothing, they didn’t even come terribly close…for the time being. They had all the time in the world. He hurried through the darkness, seeking out the shadows, and gradually the figures closed in; gradually for they had all the time in the world. He woke up in a dreadful panic, perspiring, his heart leaping out of his chest. He had been asleep for less than two hours.

  Early in the morning, as the sun came up, he felt stronger. The humming and burning had ceased, and he began to wonder: Am I free of this dreadful condition? Of course, he hadn’t understood. The vast circuit was merely down for the night. The millions of accusing eyes were closed. In any event, he decided: I will be strong. What other choice did he have? He had none, other than to die again, slowly or quickly; and truly. It was in that frame of mind that he decided he would not be a prisoner in his own apartment. He would lead his life as best he could and set his jaw against the mob. He would start by taking Campbell to the bus stop, as always.

  At 7:00, Tony, the doorman, called upstairs, with apologies, to say that about a half dozen reporters and photographers were camped outside, on the sidewalk and in cars. Bonita relayed the message, and Sherman squared his jaw and raised his chin and resolved to deal with them the same way you would deal with foul weather. The two of them, Sherman in his most uncompromising nailhead worsted suit from England and Campbell in her Taliaferro school uniform, got off the elevator and approached the door, and Tony said, with genuine feeling, “Good luck. They’re a rude lot.” Out on the sidewalk the first one was a very young man, babyish in appearance, and he approached with something resembling politeness and said, “Mr. McCoy, I’d like to ask you—”

  Sherman took Campbell’s hand and raised his Yale chin and said, “I have no comment whatsoever. Now, if you’ll just excuse me.”

  Suddenly five, six, seven of them were all around him and around Campbell, and there was no more “Mr. McCoy.”

  “Sherman! One minute! Who was the woman?”

  “Sherman! Hold it a second! Just one picture!”

  “Hey, Sherman! Your lawyer says—”

  “Hold it! Hey! Hey! What’s your name, Pretty?”

  One of them was calling Campbell Pretty! Appalled and furious, he turned toward the voice. The same one—with the tangles of kinky hair pasted on his skull—and now two pieces of toilet paper on his cheek.

  Sherman turned back to Campbell. A confused smile was on her face. The cameras! Picture-taking had always meant a happy occasion.

  “What’s her name, Sherman!”

  “Hi, Pretty, what’s your name?”

  The filthy one with the toilet paper on his face was bending over his little girl and speaking in an unctuous avuncular voice.

  “Leave her alone!” said Sherman. He could see the fear come into Campbell’s face with the sharpness of his own voice.

  All at once a microphone was in front of his nose, blocking his vision.

  A tall sinewy young woman with big jaws: “Henry Lamb lies near death in the hospital, and you’re walking down Park Avenue. How do you feel about Henry—”

  Sherman swung his forearm up to knock the microphone out of his face. The woman began screaming:

  “You big bastard!” To her colleagues: “You saw that! He hit me! The sonofabitch hit me! You saw that! You saw it! I’m having you arrested for assault, you sonofabitch!”

  The pack swarmed about them, Sherman and his little girl. He reached down and put his arm around Campbell’s shoulders and tried to pull her close to him and walk quickly toward the corner at the same time.

  “Come on, Sherman! Just a couple a questions and we’ll let you go!”

  From behind, the woman was still bellowing and whining: “Hey, you get a picture a that? I wanna see what you got! That’s evidence! You gotta show it to me!” Then down the street: “You don’t care who you hit, do you, you racist fuck!”

  Racist fuck! The woman was white.

  Campbell’s face was frozen in fear and consternation.

  The light changed, and the pack followed the two of them and pigged and hived about them all the way across Park Avenue. Sherman and Campbell, hand in hand, plowed on straight ahead, and the reporters and photographers who surrounded them scampered backward and sideways and crabwise.

  “Sherman!”

  “Sherman!”

  “Look at me, Pretty!”

  The parents, nannies, and children waiting at the Taliaferro bus stop shrank back. They wanted no part of the disgusting eruption they saw coming toward them, this noisy swarm of shame, guilt, humiliation, and torment. On the other hand, they also didn’t want their little ones to miss the bus, which was approaching. So they shuddered and retreated a few feet into a clump, as if blown together by the wind. For a moment Sherman thought someone might step in to help, not so much for his sake as for Campbell’s, but he was mistaken. Some stared, as if they didn’t know who he was. Others averted their eyes. Sherman scanned their faces. The lovely little Mrs. Lueger! She had both hands on the shoulders of her little girl, who stared with big, fascinated eyes. Mrs. Lueger looked at him as if he were a vagrant from the Sixty-seventh Street Armory.

  Campbell, in her little burgundy uniform, trudged up the steps into the interior of the bus and then cast one last look over her shoulders. Tears streamed down her face, without a sound.

  Now a pang tore through Sherman’s solar plexus. He had not yet died again. He was not yet dead for a second time; not yet. The photographer with the toilet paper on his cheek was right behi
nd him, not eighteen inches away, with his horrible instrument screwed into his eye socket.

  Grab him! Drive it into his brain! “Hey, Pretty!” you dare say to my flesh and blood—

  But what was the use? For they weren’t the enemy out there any longer, were they? They were parasites inside his very hide. The humming and the burning began again for the day.

  Fallow sauntered across the city room and let them drink in his imposing figure. He held in his midsection and straightened his back. Tomorrow he would begin a serious exercise regimen. There was no reason why he shouldn’t have a heroic physique. On the way downtown he had stopped off at Herzfeld, a haberdashery on Madison Avenue that carried European and British clothes, and he had bought a spotted navy silk-grenadine necktie. The tiny spots were embroidered in white. He had put it on right there in the store, letting the salesman get a load of his detachable collar. He was wearing his best shirt, which was from Bowring, Arundel & Co., Savile Row. It was a sincere shirt, and it was a sincere necktie. If only he could afford a new blazer, with rich belly-cut lapels that didn’t shine…Ah well, hey ho—soon enough! He stopped by the edge of the desk and picked up a City Light from a stack of early editions left there for the use of the staff. SEEK “FOXY” BRUNETTE MYSTERY GIRL. Another page 1 story by Peter Fallow. The rest of the print swam amid the foggy eye trash in front of his face. But he continued to stare at it, so as to give them all a chance to drink in the presence of…Peter Fallow…Take a look, you poor drudges, humped over your word processors, clattering away and nattering away and grousing about your “one hundred big ones.” All at once he felt so grand, he thought about what a superior gesture it would be to walk over to poor Goldman and give him his hundred dollars. Well, he’d put that in the back of his mind.

  When he reached his cubicle, there were already six or seven message slips on his desk. He leafed through them, half expecting that one might be from a movie producer.