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Wolfe's New Journalism still on fire
By Wan Lixin |
August 15, 2009, Saturday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
UNLIKE the previous titles handled on this page, the book reviewed this time is a best-selling novel written more than two decades ago by an ex-journalist.
Tom Wolfe's first novel "The Bonfire of the Vanities" (1987) was a commercial and critical success and was made into a film in 1990, but it is still a gripping read for those curious about Wall Street and New York.
This tale of greed, ambition and power in the financial world affords a glimpse into the life of American financiers against the background of racial and cultural tension in 1980s New York.
The novel was partly based on the author's own experience as a hedge fund investor.
The hero is bond salesman Sherman McCoy who regards himself "Master of the Universe" after completing a trade that netted him US$50,000.
A Yale graduate, McCoy has a US$3 million Park Avenue condominium, a two-seat Mercedes sports roadster, wears a blue-gray custom-tailored US$1,800 suit, and goes to his office in a taxi, though the subway would let him off right in front of Pierce & Pierce, the investment bank he works for.
The bond trading room on the 50th floor presents the sight of "well-educated white men baying for money on the bond market."
"Pierce & Pierce was the power, and he was wired into the power, and the power hummed and surged in his very innards," the novel observes.
He plans to sell the French government bond called The Giscard, which is backed by gold and has a face value of US$6.5 billion. He would receive about US$1.75 million for conceiving and structuring the deal.
For all his vanities, the Master of Universe insists on finding time to exercise his dog.
His real intention is to go to a pay phone to talk with his girlfriend Maria, without his wife overhearing.
Maria, 26, was a trophy wife married to a multimillionaire septuagenarian.
McCoy gets lost in the Bronx while driving Maria from the airport.
When they are confronted with two menacing black men, Maria jumps behind the wheel and, as the panicked lovers speed off, the car fishtails, hitting one of the blacks, Henry Lamb.
McCoy is arrested for the hit-and-run.
A black minister calls for the conviction of the privileged banker, and a tabloid reveals how the white power structure is doing nothing to bring the killer to justice.
Maria fingers McCoy as the driver, but he gets off by betraying her in turn.
In the money-hemorrhaging case, McCoy has to pay US$12 million to the black victim in a civil suit, and becomes penniless.
In writing the novel Wolfe experimented with using fiction-writing techniques he developed while writing feature stories for The Washington Post, in a style Wolfe called New Journalism.
Here he made use of a variety of literary techniques, mixing them with the traditional ideal of detached, objective reporting.
He has long been critical of American literary scene, and believes that modern literature could be saved by a greater use of journalistic technique.
Wolfe planned to write a novel that aspired to William Makepeace Thackeray's "Vanity Fair."
He began researching the novel by observing cases at the Manhattan Criminal Court. Later he proposed to have the novel published in instalments, just as Thackeray used to do.
The deadline pressure gave him the needed discipline.
It turned out in book form after being heavily revised, with Sherman McCoy recast from a writer to a bond salesman.
The novel reminds me of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" (1925). That novel also includes such elements as the bond business, the vanities associated with easy money, class, the mistress behind the wheel in a hit-and-run, and the mistress trying to shift the blame to her partner. Gatsby is shot dead.
Both Fitzgerald and Wolfe made enormous profits through writing. It is said that Wolfe will get US$7 million for a new book this year.
Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald also experienced how his own success had turned sour. How about Wolfe?
Tom Wolfe's first novel "The Bonfire of the Vanities" (1987) was a commercial and critical success and was made into a film in 1990, but it is still a gripping read for those curious about Wall Street and New York.
This tale of greed, ambition and power in the financial world affords a glimpse into the life of American financiers against the background of racial and cultural tension in 1980s New York.
The novel was partly based on the author's own experience as a hedge fund investor.
The hero is bond salesman Sherman McCoy who regards himself "Master of the Universe" after completing a trade that netted him US$50,000.
A Yale graduate, McCoy has a US$3 million Park Avenue condominium, a two-seat Mercedes sports roadster, wears a blue-gray custom-tailored US$1,800 suit, and goes to his office in a taxi, though the subway would let him off right in front of Pierce & Pierce, the investment bank he works for.
The bond trading room on the 50th floor presents the sight of "well-educated white men baying for money on the bond market."
"Pierce & Pierce was the power, and he was wired into the power, and the power hummed and surged in his very innards," the novel observes.
He plans to sell the French government bond called The Giscard, which is backed by gold and has a face value of US$6.5 billion. He would receive about US$1.75 million for conceiving and structuring the deal.
For all his vanities, the Master of Universe insists on finding time to exercise his dog.
His real intention is to go to a pay phone to talk with his girlfriend Maria, without his wife overhearing.
Maria, 26, was a trophy wife married to a multimillionaire septuagenarian.
McCoy gets lost in the Bronx while driving Maria from the airport.
When they are confronted with two menacing black men, Maria jumps behind the wheel and, as the panicked lovers speed off, the car fishtails, hitting one of the blacks, Henry Lamb.
McCoy is arrested for the hit-and-run.
A black minister calls for the conviction of the privileged banker, and a tabloid reveals how the white power structure is doing nothing to bring the killer to justice.
Maria fingers McCoy as the driver, but he gets off by betraying her in turn.
In the money-hemorrhaging case, McCoy has to pay US$12 million to the black victim in a civil suit, and becomes penniless.
In writing the novel Wolfe experimented with using fiction-writing techniques he developed while writing feature stories for The Washington Post, in a style Wolfe called New Journalism.
Here he made use of a variety of literary techniques, mixing them with the traditional ideal of detached, objective reporting.
He has long been critical of American literary scene, and believes that modern literature could be saved by a greater use of journalistic technique.
Wolfe planned to write a novel that aspired to William Makepeace Thackeray's "Vanity Fair."
He began researching the novel by observing cases at the Manhattan Criminal Court. Later he proposed to have the novel published in instalments, just as Thackeray used to do.
The deadline pressure gave him the needed discipline.
It turned out in book form after being heavily revised, with Sherman McCoy recast from a writer to a bond salesman.
The novel reminds me of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" (1925). That novel also includes such elements as the bond business, the vanities associated with easy money, class, the mistress behind the wheel in a hit-and-run, and the mistress trying to shift the blame to her partner. Gatsby is shot dead.
Both Fitzgerald and Wolfe made enormous profits through writing. It is said that Wolfe will get US$7 million for a new book this year.
Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald also experienced how his own success had turned sour. How about Wolfe?
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