Homicides were at near record highs, the Crack epidemic was raging’, and the city ‘had not yet experienced the wave of gentrification that has marked it in modern times’ ( The book and film version of The Bonfire of the Vanities are both set in this city, wracked by cultural and racial tension, by power, greed and ambition. It was, he wrote, ‘an altogether different city from the safe, clean (for the most part), cosmopolitan urban playground it is today. Despite the socio-economic scarring of cities by COVID, Brazilian cinematic storyteller Lucas Compan’s observation (in 2017) of New York in the 1980s, is still true. Like many edgy postmodern works, Wolfe’s book is rooted in history and reality. ‘Vanities’, that is, as the empty mirage/s of life the Old Testament ‘Preacher’ denounces at the start of Ecclesiastes (Hebrew: Kohelet): ‘Vanity, all is vanity’ (1.2), a futile vapor without substance or meaning. It is a tough study of what it means for the three main characters – WASP bond trader Sherman McCoy, Jewish Assistant District Attorney Larry Kramer, and the expatriate British journalist Peter Fallow – to be consumed by the modern ‘vanities’ of ambition, class, greed, politics and race. Wolfe’s (originally serialized) novel is set in 1980s New York City. It’s sad – at times, embarrassing – when what is meant as a celebration becomes the opposite a portrait rejected by the sitter, a meal for friends under-cooked, a Christmas gift despised, a good book spoiled by a poor film. But can we – or, better, should we – read more in the public’s reaction? I suggest we might. Images can be a poor substitute for imagination.

It’s not the first time – and will certainly not be the last – a good book has made a bad film. Despite its best-selling literary source, satirical humour, and star-studded cast (including Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Melanie Griffith, Kim Cattrall and Morgan Freeman), the film was a commercial flop, grossing $15m. 1940) film adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s novel The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987).

When it was released in 1990, critics panned Brian de Palma’s (b.

The vanities of the bonfire