The Bonfire of the Vanities

"Tom Wolfe is a very good friend of mine and he wrote the foreword to my new book. When The Bonfire of the Vanities came out in 1986 it captured New York life, and in particular the criminal justice system, like nothing else. I was jealous. I was living this life but Tom Wolfe wrote it. How was a non-cop able to capture this? He captured the nuances of the criminal justice system, and especially the issue of race. His treatment of the criminal justice system in the county of the Bronx is hilarious and deeply troubling. Cops certainly could relate to the prisoners in the Bronx jail who knew more about the sections of the penal law than all of the prosecutors and defence lawyers combined. The inmates were quite comfortable reciting the numerical chapter of the penal code as opposed to the English title of such code. And so we find one inmate proudly proclaiming that he is in for ‘160.15’ (which is armed robbery) as opposed to his less manly inmate who is only in for ‘140.10’ (a second degree burglary.) The story begins when an 18-year-old lad, a typical corner boy, is run over by Sherman McCoy, a Wall Street stockbroker. It is not clear if the deceased is a drug dealer or just a street hustler, but once the media come along, he’s this poor innocent kid, the flower of the city, struck down by who knows who. And an honour student heading for college to boot! So this English reporter for one of the daily tabloids is told to give the kid a scrub down and find out what he’s about, this budding honour student. The reporter goes to interview the kid’s high school teacher, a Jewish guy mowing his lawn in shorts with a pot belly, and the interviewer asks him about this kid, the honour student, and the teacher says: ‘I don’t have an honour student in my class. My students range between co-operative and dangerous.’ But the overarching theme of the whole book is the search for the great white defendant. The vast majority of defendants in New York City are minorities in for killing another minority. And the cops and prosecutors are all about the press and their careers – one drug dealer killing another drug dealer is not going to get you any attention so, subliminally, they are always looking for a great white defendant who will make their careers. Of course, McCoy is just a schlemiel who took a wrong turn with his girlfriend on a hot summer night. The book is drop-dead, laughing-out-loud hilarious. It shines a light on the criminal justice system and on the Upper Eastside society and it’s all pretty pathetic, but funny at the same time."