Vanities Aflame
By Steve Hill
I am just reading an American modern classic - The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe.
Although set a few years back it could have been for today, or at leats covering the last few years.
Wolf wanted the book to be the ultimate New York novel, and he certainly achieved that, but it is the world he portrays that is interesting.
A world where there is a huge gap between the haves, the middle classes and the under classes. It is interesting to read how each group finds the others sphere of existence completely alien.
One of the main characters, if not the main character, Schuman McCoy is a bond trader on wall street where he makes loads of moneyn an immoral amount of money, doesn’t that sound like bankers and traders of recent times who have led us to the current financial crisis?
The people of Harlem, in the novel, are little different to the populace of the poorer areas of the U.S., Europe and in fact many other burgeoning city in the developing world.
The outstanding feature is that all the characters, from all areas of society, are initially driven by their own agendas - with the inevitable victims from amongst the most vulnerable.
I still have a reasonable amount to read - but from what I have read so far I would soundly recommend it as a window into our lives today, giving us pause for thought, we never learn form history.
At Enigin we try to do things differently - we very much have the philosophy that there are more important things than just work, there are more important things in life.
Don’t get me wrong, we enjoy work and the company exists to make a profit, but it is not the sole aim of our lives at the cost of family or principals. Hopefully this attitude is spreading and we can steer away from the Bonfire that raged through the ’80s and the noughties.
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