More than 30 years later, in the days after Wolfe’s death at the age of 88, the Bronx is far removed from the dystopia he described.

In the 1980s, the South Bronx was still reeling from the construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway, a road designed to ease traffic through Manhattan that essentially cut the most northerly borough in two, causing businesses to leave and residents to flee. Buildings were abandoned or set on fire, so owners could claim insurance. Unemployment and gangs were rife.

Regeneration efforts have succeeded in improving the borough’s reputation. But racial tensions of a different kind linger, as the spectre of gentrification looms.

Around half a mile from the highway, the Mott Haven neighbourhood has become the focal point of the battle. Along the industrial banks of the Harlem river, looking south to Manhattan, seven high-rise buildings are under construction. Half a mile further north, things are also changing.

The area around the 3rd Avenue-138th Street subway stop – 138th street being the highway exit taken by McCoy – is becoming a desirable locale for young, often white professionals and families who want out of Manhattan. Completion is imminent on two looming 11-story buildings, one of which has its seventh and eighth floors twisted at an angle from the rest of the structure, like the middle of a Rubik’s Cube.

Opposite, a juice and panini shop offers shots of wheatgrass for $5 – with the option to add turmeric for 50 cents. Newly opened cafes dot the neighbourhood, standing out from corner delis offering $1 cups of coffee, self-poured from clear jugs on top of heated machines.

In 2016, the Furman Center named Mott Haven as one of the most rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods in New York City, with median rent up 28% between 1990 and the period 2010 to 2014. But median income has not increased correspondingly and the changes have angered locals. Some have launched campaigns to monitor private developments.

“I see it as an effort to erase the history of the neighborhood and the cultural and social achievements of this community,” Monxo Lopez, a founder of South Bronx Unite, told the New York Times last year.

In Wolfe’s novel, the man who takes up the cause of the comatose Lamb is the Reverend Bacon. He is widely seen to have been at least partly based on the Rev Al Sharpton, who rose to prominence in the 1980s and these days hosts his own television show – PoliticsNation – on MSNBC. Sharpton and his National Action Network remain active. Recently, NAN weighed in on the case of a white school principal who allegedly abused black teachers and students.

‘Unspoken requirements’
McCoy and Ruskin eventually make it back to Manhattan, where Ruskin convinces McCoy to keep quiet about their time in the Bronx. He makes his way back to his apartment on the Upper East Side, a world inhabited by other elites of the day.

Because elite co-op boards refused to allow tenants to have mortgages on their properties, McCoy’s Park Avenue apartment, a co-op, was bought with a personal loan. Cooperative boards in the most desirable buildings would also turn away people not from the “right” background – not a problem for McCoy, a Wasp from an old money background.

The mortgage rule still applies, said Alvin Hall, an American journalist who revisited the New York City of Wolfe’s novel for a BBC radio series. But the rules regarding background have changed … somewhat.

“In the fanciest buildings there are still unspoken requirements, and one of the unspoken requirements is philanthropy,” Hall said. “If you’re rich and you’re not doing philanthropic work, chances are you won’t get in that building.”

Otherwise, the Upper East Side appears to have changed relatively little since the 1980s, particularly when compared to the South Bronx just four miles north.

Park Avenue, where McCoy lived, is untouched by new development. The wide street is lined with sandstone and brown-brick apartment buildings, none of them taller than 20 stories, each complete with a bow-tied doorman. Outside 720 Park Avenue, home to the multi-billionaire rightwing activist David Koch, SUVs, engines running, line the street. Around the corner a Cartier store stands opposite Prada, close to Elie Saab. The restaurants are French and expensive.

‘Sexy money’

Continuing south, it is a 20-minute subway ride to Wall Street, the thrusting bear pit at the heart of Wolfe’s novel. McCoy famously refused to take the subway, but if he dared venture on to it today he would find it cleaner: gone are the graffiti-covered trains and flickering lights. Ageing infrastructure and overcrowding, however, mean the subway has in some ways declined.

The 4 train coughs passengers out a block from the New York Stock Exchange, where McCoy was among the suspenders-wearing traders glancing at black and green screens and making deals over corded phones.

As a bond trader, McCoy held one of the wealthiest, most desirable positions in the city. As the events of the Bonfire of the Vanities unfold he tries – ultimately without success – to seal a deal that would net him $1.75m.

These days, bond traders do not carry the same cachet. The “sexy money”, as Alvin Hall put it, is to be found in equity trading, where there is risk and reward in betting on companies’ futures. Often, traders don’t even work in New York’s traditional financial hub, preferring midtown to downtown. On Wall Street, much of the bond trading is automated. The double-breasted pin-striped suits of the 80s are gone too. Traders do not meet and hobnob in the same way; chinos and open-necked shirts are the common uniform.

There are other signs that Wall Street is not quite the intimating world it was. 

This week the New York Stock Exchange building was adorned with a huge red sign, which implored passersby to follow the NYSE on Pinterest. The awning above the security screening entrance entreated visitors to befriend the stock exchange on Snapchat.

Even the famous New York bull, the symbol of a roaring, aggressive market, was cowed last year when a bronze statue of a “fearless girl” was placed in front of it.

If Wall Street has lost some of its prestige as a workplace, though, as a neighborhood it certainly has not suffered. The brick skyscrapers of the finance center, a precursor to the ubiquitous steel and glass towers of today, still loom. They are still occupied. The people Wolfe satirised 30 years ago may have different jobs and backgrounds, but their fantastic wealth still exists.

In the same way, the Bronx is still confronted by issues of inequality and poverty. At the end of the Bonfire of the Vanities, Henry Lamb, the young boy injured in the Bronx, is forgotten by every protagonist. He dies.