The Bonfire of the Vanities-虚荣的篝火

作者：Wolfe Tom

书名：The Bonfire of the Vanities《虚荣的篝火》

中文简介：“虚荣的篝火”是汤姆·沃尔夫 1987年的讽刺小说。这个故事是关于20世纪80年代纽约市的野心，种族主义，社会阶级，政治和贪婪的戏剧，并以三个主角为中心： WASP债券交易员Sherman McCoy，犹太助理地区检察官 Larry Kramer和英国外籍记者Peter Fallow。

英文简介：Sherman McCoy, the central figure of Tom Wolfe's first novel, is a young investment banker with a fourteen-room apartment in Manhattan. When he is involved in a freak accident in the Bronx, prosecutors, politicians, the press, the police, the clergy, and assorted hustlers high and low close in on him, licking their chops and giving us a gargantuan helping of the human comedy of New York in the last years of the twentieth century, a city boiling over with racial and ethnic hostilities and burning with the itch to Grab It Now. Wolfe's gallery ranges from Wall Street, where people in their thirties feel like small-fry if they're not yet making a million per, to the real streets, where the aim is lower but the itch is just as virulent.

We see this feverish landscape through the eyes of McCoy's wife and his mistress; the young prosecutor for whom the McCoy case would be he answer to a prayer; the ne'er-do-well British journalist who needs such a case to save his career in America; the street-wise Irish lawyer who becomes McCoy's only ally; and Reverend Bacon of Harlem, a master manipulator of public opinion. Above all, we see what happens when the criminal justice system-gorged with "the chow," as the Bronx prosecutor calls the borough's usual black and Latin felons-considers the prospect of being banded a prime cut like Sherman McCoy of Park Avenue.