Popular Culture Review Vol. 3, No. 2, August 1992 | Page 16

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The Popular Culture Review

Master of the Universe to sideshow freak, and, most important, from
serious participant in the games of Wall Street and Park Avenue to
amused observer of life in general. She is, in short, responsible for
Sherman's ironic detachment from life, his new self.
Before that new self can be bom, however, the old one, replete
with narcissism and conscience, must die, and Wolfe carefully,
deliberately, employs the imagery of death to signal this change.
Citing the belief among the Bororo Indians of the Brazilian Amazon
that the self is not an inviolable private space but rather a "cavity"
shaped and occupied by the entire community, Wolfe then asks what
happens when the cavity becomes an "amusement park" for the
curious and ruthless masses, a place where all the world-"to(fo el
mundo, tout le monde,” to use the language of both the lower classes
and older, politer society (a brilliant Wolfean play on words)—comes
to enjoy the spectacle of one man's ruin (511-12). The answer is that
the nuin, as a private being and as a product of community, ceases to
exist. And so it is with Sherman McCoy. His narcissistic self is
killed by the amused crowds, who include the bloodthirsty press,
corrupt politicians, self-serving public servants, fellow prison
inmates, former friends and acquaintances, and finally the rest of the
world. Wolfe is explicit about the murderous effects of these
individuals:
. . . [Sherman] could see a thicket of microphones. He
could hear the cameras whining away. Tbe horrible
fire in their faces! He wanted to die . . . . And then
he was dead, so dead he couldn't even die.
He didn't even possess the willpower to fall down.
The reporters and cameramen and photographers . . .
they were the maggots and flies, and he was the dead
beast they had found to crawl over and root into. . . .
It was not an ordinary arrest. It was death. Every bitof honor, respect, dignity, that he . . . nught ever
have possess^ had been removed, just like that, and
it was his dead soul that now stood here in the rain,
in handcuffs, in the Bronx . . . . The maggots called
him Sherman. They were right on top of him (474).