Title
The title is a reference to the historical Bonfire of the Vanities, which happened in 1497 in Florence, Italy, when the city was under the rule of the Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola. The book's title is evidently a reference to the vanities of New York society of the 1980s and appears to also be influenced by Ecclesiastes: the phrase 'vanity of vanities, all is vanity' is from Ecclesiastes, 1:2. Both Ecclesiastes and The Bonfire of the Vanities have similar themes involving the lack of control anyone has over their lives regardless of their wealth, wisdom, or success.
Read more about this topic: The Bonfire Of The Vanities
Famous quotes containing the word title:
“Down the road, on the right hand, on Brister’s Hill, lived Brister Freeman, “a handy Negro,” slave of Squire Cummings once.... Not long since I read his epitaph in the old Lincoln burying-ground, a little on one side, near the unmarked graves of some British grenadiers who fell in the retreat from Concord,—where he is styled “Sippio Brister,”MScipio Africanus he had some title to be called,—”a man of color,” as if he were discolored.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man’s title to fame. Only those books come down which deserve to last.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Now that the steam engine rules the world, a title is an absurdity, still I am all dressed up in this title. It will crush me if I do not support it. The title attracts attention to myself.”
—Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)