That it defined a decade? Seems like it embodied it
It may have embodied a few zip codes. Most of us had no experience whatsoever with loaning private jets to opera singers or taking out million dollar loans so our wives could get our condos in Architectural Digest. If you're an angelino, Less Than Zero is closer to your experience. If you're from neither city, the books that defined the 80s were written by Tom Clancy or Danielle Steele or Stephen King, not Tom Wolfe or Brett Ellis.
Name the book that defines the 90s. 70s. 60s. 50s. I mean, even if you go back a hundred years you're going to fight between Gatsby and Grapes of Wrath. O e of the problems I have with Bonfire of the Vanities is it's advertised as satire, but it’s a deeply aspirational book. There's a very clear desire to be Sherman McCoy in it, only without being an insensitive dick. And fucking hell it hasn't aged well. There's a lot of deeply racist shit in it. Bonfire of the Vanities is the book that defines the assholes that put Rudy Giuliani in power, that destroyed the economy in 2007. It is their anthem. And the fact that the book rewards their basest instincts and prejudices is reason enough to stop celebrating it.
The bad guys are all black or jewish caricatures (shylock bad) while the good guys are all either Irish or midwesterners. The basic drive of the book is "New York is being destroyed by a shitty caricature of Al Sharpton and his negro militia while Ed Koch watches the world burn."
I'm sorry you went through that As a person with direct Chicago ties but who never actually lived I don't think they get enough credit for being not completely terrible about their own sense of self importance as a city. Reminds me of an AA joke about wanting credit for not committing one crime or another