Midpoint-Bonfire

I just passed the more than halfway point of Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities. The book has left me dumbstruck in a number of ways, first of all it is unlike anything i've ever read. Pound for pound it is the hardest book i've ever attempted to read. It's a 700 page (dense long pages with small font) observation of class warfare and general snobbery and general racism. It would appear that Wolfe has extreme disdain for all of these characters, which helps build a level of interest for a reader, and when the protagonist Sherman McCoy spends 20 pages discussing the dining room at the wealthy home he is eating in, it's more of a reflection on greed than a lesson on decoration. Sherman is an extremely interesting character who sees the world differently than any character before him. He posseses certain qualities that make him so hatable you just want to hear him talk to see what horrible things he has to say about the human condition. The man is so slimy he can actually justify cheating on his wife, because he believes that is what he deserves after a long days work on Wall Street. Using hindsight it's obvious to see how such a meltdown could occur on Wall Street if all those firms are populated with people like McCoy. It's not enough that McCoy is an unrepentant philanderer he is also a willing accomplice in a murder. I won't give anymore away, but to say that his racism and xenophobia allows him to commit this crime, he never ceases to surprise me.