The dynamic language speeds the plot along, even as the story line itself falters. McCoy's story is a conventional tale in which few of the characters surprise. As the result of a freak hit-and-run accident in Bronx, McCoy becomes embroiled in the farcical, gargantuan appartus of the municipal court system. And just as McCoy used people in his life to serve his own egotistical ends, so he in turn becomes the vehicle for power that Wolfe's other characters seek. McCoy is a tweedy sacrificial lamb, ritually slayed in a public forum.

ALL the threads of the story come together at McCoy's trial--he is at once The Great White Defendant, The Big Story and The Political Boon. McCoy is dehumanized by the judicial process, and by the system that had served him so well before. He is thrown to a pack of hungry press animals, anxiously waiting in front of the precinct house to tear McCoy apart as he is arrested. The circus arrest is followed by the drama of a holding tank, complete with sinister Bronx criminal types, rats and other indignities to Sherman McCoy's person. By the time McCoy is arraigned, the Master of the Universe has become the scum of the earth.

Throughout the legal maneuverings and distorted press coverage, the McCoy trial rocks New York City as the racial incident of the decade. Of course, in the year Wolfe's book came out the city had at least two of those. Yet Wolfe's message remains clear--the public frenzy generated about the trial is the empty hysteria of an uncomprehending city. In a final touch of verisimilitude, Wolfe concludes his work with an old journalist-style fake New York Times article.

The complex characters that Wolfe so painstakingly describes are constricted by a system of emptiness and simplicity. The public life of a megalopolis like New York cannot do justice to the humanity of its constituents. The best and brightest, the Masters of the Universe, are gobbled up by the system and spit out in easily digestible tabloid form.

In The Bonfire of the Vanities, Wolfe is engaged in mythmaking; he considers the creation of a new set of legends to suit the multi-colored ethnic New York of today. But in the end, his myths are negations of the existing order. The only resolution possible is complete annihilation--the bonfire.

This message is a frightening one, challenging the security and morality of a way of life for nearly 8 million inhabitants. Sherman McCoy is no Ivan Boesky, but rather a complex and almost enduring character. He sees nothing wrong with his code of conduct, expects nothing less than perfect acceptance of the world. And that world explodes in his face--perishing in the flames the culture that produced Masters of the Universe and Masters of the Ghetto.