[HN Gopher] Can a novel capture the power of money?
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Can a novel capture the power of money?
Author : samclemens
Score : 17 points
Date : 2023-05-19 04:53 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| syndacks wrote:
| The book in reference here is Trust, which was a finalist for the
| most recent Booker prize. I would say the answer to the question
| posed here is definitely, "yes". It's well written, has a good
| twist, and occasionally evokes the idea of ML algorithms used to
| predict the stock market (even though it's set in the early 20th
| century).
| ur-whale wrote:
| https://archive.is/4KLVs
| keiferski wrote:
| _For the most part, though, markets elude the grasp of
| representation. How can a novel capture this opaque, all-
| powerful, and essential force?_
|
| I thought Don DeLillo's novel (and later film adaptation)
| _Cosmopolis_ did a good job exploring the abstract power of
| money. Here's an excerpt:
|
| _"We want to think about the art of money-making, " she said.
| She was sitting in the rear seat, his seat, the club chair, and
| he looked at her and waited. "The Greeks have a word for it." He
| waited. "Chrimatistikos," she said. "But we have to give the word
| a little leeway. Adapt it to the current situation. Because money
| has taken a turn. All wealth has become wealth for its own sake.
| There's no other kind of enormous wealth. Money has lost its
| narrative quality the way painting did once upon a time. Money is
| talking to itself."
|
| She usually wore a beret but was bareheaded today, Vija Kinski, a
| small woman in a button-down business shirt, an old embroidered
| vest and a long pleated skirt of a thousand launderings, his
| chief of theory, late for their weekly meeting. "And property
| follows of course. The concept of property is changing by the
| day, by the hour. The enormous expenditures that people make for
| land and houses and boats and planes. This has nothing to do with
| traditional self-assurances, okay. Property is no longer about
| power, personality and command. It's not about vulgar display or
| tasteful display. Because it no longer has weight or shape. The
| only thing that matters is the price you pay. Yourself, Eric,
| think.
|
| What did you buy for your one hundred and four million dollars?
| Not dozens of rooms, incomparable views, private elevators. Not
| the rotating bedroom and computerized bed. Not the swimming pool
| or the shark. Was it air rights? The regulating sensors and
| software? Not the mirrors that tell you how you feel when you
| look at yourself in the morning. You paid the money for the
| number itself. One hundred and four million. This is what you
| bought. And it's worth it. The number justifies itself."_
|
| The film version:
|
| https://youtu.be/eVRpA-_jzV4
| dbtc wrote:
| Cosmopolis
| keiferski wrote:
| Oops I forgot to include the title. Yep, both film and novel
| are called _Cosmopolis._
| jesuslop wrote:
| That gives a nice ethymology for spanish "crematistico"
| (pertaining to money)
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| https://archive.is/4KLVs
| TMWNN wrote:
| In this era of inflation, let me once again recommend Arthur R.
| G. Solmssen's _A Princess in Berlin_ (1980), which covertly
| offers a crash course in early-1920s German political and
| economic history--including many details of the societal effects
| of hyperinflation--amidst a very sweet love story.
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