Jovi as one of the premier rock bands of the day. It
won the American Music Award for Favorite Pop/
Rock Band in 1988. The group continued to tour ex-
tensively and the following year (1989) appeared at
the Moscow Music Peace Festival in Lenin Stadium.
Impact Bon Jovi achieved enormous success dur-
ing the 1980’s by mixing heavy metal with the softer,
melodic interest of pop. The group introduced metal
to a wider audience, including women, making it
one of the most popular musical subgenres of the
decade.
Further Reading
Raymond, John. “Bon Jovi at Memorial Coliseum,
Portland, Oregon, May 8, 1989.” InThe Show I’ll
Never Forget: Fifty Writers Relive Their Most Memorable
Concertgoing Experience, edited by Sean Manning.
Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2007.
Walser, Robert.Running with the Devil: Power, Gender
and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. Hanover, N.H.:
Wesleyan University Press, 1993.
Weinstein, Deena.Heavy Metal: A Cultural Sociology.
New York: Lexington Books, 1991.
Mar y A. Wischusen
See also Heavy metal; MTV; Music; Music videos;
Pop music; Springsteen, Bruce.
Bonfire of the Vanities, The
Identification Best-selling novel
Author Tom Wolfe (1931- )
Date Serialized 1984-1985; novel published 1987
The first novel by controversial journalist Wolfe,The Bon-
fire of the Vanitiesdemonstrated its author’s reportorial
skill, irreverent social insight, and flamboyant style as it
presented a panorama of New York in the 1980’s. The novel
portrayed an ethnically divided New York where love of sta-
tus triumphs over decency, the rich and the poor seldom
meet, a demagogue manipulates the news media, and most
politicians care more about votes than about justice.
Tom Wolfe became famous before the 1980’s for his
innovative nonfiction, but during the early 1980’s
he began work on a book he had long hoped to
write. This novel about New York City would bring
together characters from diverse social levels. To
achieve such juxtapositions convincingly, he decided
that he would need to conduct serious research,
emulating realist novelists such as Émile Zola and
Sinclair Lewis.
To combat writer’s block, Wolfe arranged to write
in installments, each of which would be published in
Rolling Stone. His daring plan worked, although he
became dissatisfied with aspects of the serialization
as it appeared from 1984 to 1985. When revising the
novel for publication as a book in 1987, he made sig-
nificant changes, most notably in transforming the
protagonist, Sherman McCoy, from a writer to a Wall
Street bond trader. The novel’s McCoy became an
expensively dressed thirty-eight-year-old with a big
income but bigger debts, a questioning daughter, a
spendthrift wife, and a voluptuous mistress.
InThe Bonfire of the Vanities, McCoy’s lifestyle and
sense of power begin their decline when he and his
mistress find themselves lost at night in the Bronx.
They encounter two young, seemingly threatening
black men, and as a result of the encounter McCoy
becomes the defendant in a hit-and-run trial. Mc-
Coy, a rich, white suspect in a crime with a black vic-
tim becomes a pawn for many other characters:
District Attorney Abe Weiss, for example, wants to
convict him to ensure his reelection, while AssistantThe Eighties in America Bonfire of the Vanities, The 125
Tom Wolfe.(Courtesy, Author)