What's a story? What does the word mean?
If you go to a dictionary, you might find it defined as a narrative. Then you might find "narrative" defined as a story.
We get closer to the heart of the matter with a definition like this: "The plot or succession of incidents in a novel, poem, drama, etc."
Succession. That's the key word there. A story is something that unfolds in time.
The simplest way of telling a story is in chronological order. Select the "incident" with which you wish to start, then tell what happened next, and so forth, until you get to the last of them. Notice that I didn't say "start at the beginning." An incident is the beginning of a story because the teller starts there. He doesn't start there because it's "the beginning" in any objective sense. Or he'd have to start every story with the Big Bang.
Also, there's the equally troubling matter of where to end. If you wish to write about the French Revolution -- do you end with the execution of the royal family? the fall of the Jacobins? or do you keep going until, say, Napoleon makes himself Emperor? A dozen other possible stopping points might have suggested them to you already by now. But of course if we think of history as a chain of cause and effect, there is no natural stopping point, short of "and then you read this sentence, ending with the word 'sentence'!"
All of this is only to make the obvious point that no matter how simple and unaffected we seek to make the structuring of our stories, they'll be what they are because of our aesthetic decisions. The decision to seem "simple and unaffected" might be one of those.
I'm thinking these matters through because I'm stuck on a literary project of my own, my "causes of the civil war" novel. I wrote the first draft, which still sits on the top shelf of my desk, in chronological order, beginning with Daniel Webster's famous speech on the nature of the Union, in January 1830. I kept writing -- sometimes about historic events, sometimes about the lives of characters I had invented -- following the order of the calender until I came to the firing upon Fort Sumter.
Now I think some non-chrono re-structuring will be required to kick-start the project.
31 January 2008
30 January 2008
Chapter Five
This will conclude my reading of the Nicky Marsh book. Her final chapter involves the portrayal of women within the financial world in contemporary Brit fiction.
One of the novels featured here is Allison Pearson's I Don't Know How She Does It (2002). A footnote tells us that Miramax bought the rights to this novel, in the hope it would prve the next Bridget Jones' Diary.
Bridget Jones, though, was an assistant at a book publisher. Pearson's protagonist Kate Reddy, is a hedge fund manager. She has a rather grandiose view of what it means for a woman at the start of the 21st century to manage a hedge fund, thinking: "We are the foundation stones and the females who come after us will scarcely give us a second thought but they will walk on our bones."
The book doesn't have a lot of the detailed accounts of particular trades that get into the sort of "financial thrillers" Marsh discussed in her fourth chapter. Not only doesn't it contain many such passages but, as Marsh puts it, the book "resists" such passages.
"The real dramas in the novel occur not around the fluctuations of currencies or stocks but around the blurry definitions of care and responsibility that economics place upon the people who drive Reddy's car, wash Reddy's clothes, and, most crucially, look after her children."
So (to wrap this up) a bankers life, or a hedge fund managers life, can give rise to drama and literature, just so long as one takes it as a life. And not just as a matter of staring at a screen, or supervising people who stare at screens.
One of the novels featured here is Allison Pearson's I Don't Know How She Does It (2002). A footnote tells us that Miramax bought the rights to this novel, in the hope it would prve the next Bridget Jones' Diary.
Bridget Jones, though, was an assistant at a book publisher. Pearson's protagonist Kate Reddy, is a hedge fund manager. She has a rather grandiose view of what it means for a woman at the start of the 21st century to manage a hedge fund, thinking: "We are the foundation stones and the females who come after us will scarcely give us a second thought but they will walk on our bones."
The book doesn't have a lot of the detailed accounts of particular trades that get into the sort of "financial thrillers" Marsh discussed in her fourth chapter. Not only doesn't it contain many such passages but, as Marsh puts it, the book "resists" such passages.
"The real dramas in the novel occur not around the fluctuations of currencies or stocks but around the blurry definitions of care and responsibility that economics place upon the people who drive Reddy's car, wash Reddy's clothes, and, most crucially, look after her children."
So (to wrap this up) a bankers life, or a hedge fund managers life, can give rise to drama and literature, just so long as one takes it as a life. And not just as a matter of staring at a screen, or supervising people who stare at screens.
29 January 2008
Chapter Four
Continuing my reading of the Nicky Marsh book.
In chapter four, Ms Marsh turns her attention to works she evidently considers not-very-literary, low brow potboilers. These are the finance world's equivalent of John Grisham or Tom Clancy.
She says that there was a "rash of novels" that applied thriller conventions to the world of finance not long after the arrest of Nick Leeson at Frankfurt Airport in March 1995.
The resulting novels seem to be read largely by people with connections to the finance industry themselves, and to be read as if they're in code, in an effort to dope out who or what is the story-behind-the-story. One such author, Paul Kilduff, posts appreciative reader e-mails on his website and Marsh quotes a bit of that.
"Is your story really based on true facts? If yes, could you indicate to me a web site where I could access the information you used to write your novel? All I recognized was the LTCM bankruptcy in the first part of the book."
His readers have an eye for detail, and want to be helpful, as shown by other examples Marsh quotes. "And in HK the main MTR interchange is Admiralty not Central...the DAX is not the name for the German Stock Exchange. It is the name for the German counterpart of the Dow Jones," and so forth.
If this makes any one curious to see that website, feel free.
Just Click Here.
In chapter four, Ms Marsh turns her attention to works she evidently considers not-very-literary, low brow potboilers. These are the finance world's equivalent of John Grisham or Tom Clancy.
She says that there was a "rash of novels" that applied thriller conventions to the world of finance not long after the arrest of Nick Leeson at Frankfurt Airport in March 1995.
The resulting novels seem to be read largely by people with connections to the finance industry themselves, and to be read as if they're in code, in an effort to dope out who or what is the story-behind-the-story. One such author, Paul Kilduff, posts appreciative reader e-mails on his website and Marsh quotes a bit of that.
"Is your story really based on true facts? If yes, could you indicate to me a web site where I could access the information you used to write your novel? All I recognized was the LTCM bankruptcy in the first part of the book."
His readers have an eye for detail, and want to be helpful, as shown by other examples Marsh quotes. "And in HK the main MTR interchange is Admiralty not Central...the DAX is not the name for the German Stock Exchange. It is the name for the German counterpart of the Dow Jones," and so forth.
If this makes any one curious to see that website, feel free.
Just Click Here.
28 January 2008
Chapter Three
Continuing my reading of Nicky Marsh's book.
But chapter three, she's narrowing her attention to issues more akin to those that inspired me to request a review copy of the book in the first place. For this isn't about literature and attitudes toward hoarding or the exchange rate -- this is about Brit lit and attitudes toward "the City," the financial district of London.
One of the books prominently featured here is "What a Carve Up!" by Jonathan Coe (1994). This is very much a pomo novel. Its about a novelist, Michael Owen, which is always a good post-modern start. Michael has been hired to write the history of a particular eccentric family, the Winshaws. Increasingly, Michael's research uncovers ways in which the Winshaws' lives intersect with his own, so that he becomes central to his text.
One of the objects of that research is Thomas Winshaw, a banker. Through Michael's eyes, then, Coe describes Thomas' obsession with computer screens and the visually self-enveloping character of his work in the City.
Thomas, who supervises traders, installs a camera so he can stare all day at a screen that shows "nothing but row upon row of his traders, themselves staring at screens ... It seemed, at such moments, there was no end to the glassy barriers which he could put up between himself and the people (did they really exist?) whose money formed the basis of each day's intoxicating speculations."
This reminds me of last week's news out of France. Of course a superviser who followed Thomas' methods would never have found any harm in Jerome K's dealings. He would simply have seen that Jerome came in on time each day, sat at his desk, stared at his screen, and pressed buttons on the keyboard.
At any rate, on the evidence of Marsh's quotations from Coe, I have to credit the latter with at least that one arresting image of the work life of one sort of banker.
But chapter three, she's narrowing her attention to issues more akin to those that inspired me to request a review copy of the book in the first place. For this isn't about literature and attitudes toward hoarding or the exchange rate -- this is about Brit lit and attitudes toward "the City," the financial district of London.
One of the books prominently featured here is "What a Carve Up!" by Jonathan Coe (1994). This is very much a pomo novel. Its about a novelist, Michael Owen, which is always a good post-modern start. Michael has been hired to write the history of a particular eccentric family, the Winshaws. Increasingly, Michael's research uncovers ways in which the Winshaws' lives intersect with his own, so that he becomes central to his text.
One of the objects of that research is Thomas Winshaw, a banker. Through Michael's eyes, then, Coe describes Thomas' obsession with computer screens and the visually self-enveloping character of his work in the City.
Thomas, who supervises traders, installs a camera so he can stare all day at a screen that shows "nothing but row upon row of his traders, themselves staring at screens ... It seemed, at such moments, there was no end to the glassy barriers which he could put up between himself and the people (did they really exist?) whose money formed the basis of each day's intoxicating speculations."
This reminds me of last week's news out of France. Of course a superviser who followed Thomas' methods would never have found any harm in Jerome K's dealings. He would simply have seen that Jerome came in on time each day, sat at his desk, stared at his screen, and pressed buttons on the keyboard.
At any rate, on the evidence of Marsh's quotations from Coe, I have to credit the latter with at least that one arresting image of the work life of one sort of banker.
27 January 2008
Chapter Two
Continuing my reading of Nicky Marsh's book.
By chapter two, we're done with Mr. Fleming and into a period one can describe as "contemporary British fiction" without blushing. We're into the Thatcher area anyway. Malcolm Bradbury was an important figure in the letters of that time and place, and March devotes a good deal of attention to Bradbury's 1983 novel, RATES OF EXCHANGE.
The plot of RATES involves a cultural exchange program between the UK and the small eastern European country of Slaka. Angus Petworth is the Brit academic who travels to Slaka in hopes of coming to understand what "Afghanistan and the Reagan hard line, the failure of detente and the collapse of SALT" mean for Europe's east-west relations.
Here we get to the reason why the book belongs in Marsh's survey. The currency speculators Petworth meets in Slaka are prostitutes. Or, rather, the prostitutes are currency speculators.
"Petworth looks at the swinging legs along the barm and sees that Marx was right; beneath each leathered shining super-structure there in an economuc infra-structure," the sole of each book bearing a "chalked hieroglyph."
Yet given the complexity of "rates of exchange" the pricing of sexual services as on the boots is ambiguous. There are five different rates of pounds to Slakan money involved, so that Petworth learns that some time with any one of these entrepreneurs could cost him anywhere from the price of a round of ale, to the price of a three-piece suit.
Actually, though, they aren't entrepreneurs. They're state employees, and they make their "real money" from pillow talk -- from going to the Police with any information they get that might be of interest thereto.
Marsh says (and, so far as I understand the jargon, I gather this means that she disapproves) that Bradbury is adopting "money's more persistently misogynistic and mystifying narratives rather than [interrogating] the new political possiobilities demanded by [the] moment."
So it isn't Bradbury's narrative? It's money's narrative?
By chapter two, we're done with Mr. Fleming and into a period one can describe as "contemporary British fiction" without blushing. We're into the Thatcher area anyway. Malcolm Bradbury was an important figure in the letters of that time and place, and March devotes a good deal of attention to Bradbury's 1983 novel, RATES OF EXCHANGE.
The plot of RATES involves a cultural exchange program between the UK and the small eastern European country of Slaka. Angus Petworth is the Brit academic who travels to Slaka in hopes of coming to understand what "Afghanistan and the Reagan hard line, the failure of detente and the collapse of SALT" mean for Europe's east-west relations.
Here we get to the reason why the book belongs in Marsh's survey. The currency speculators Petworth meets in Slaka are prostitutes. Or, rather, the prostitutes are currency speculators.
"Petworth looks at the swinging legs along the barm and sees that Marx was right; beneath each leathered shining super-structure there in an economuc infra-structure," the sole of each book bearing a "chalked hieroglyph."
Yet given the complexity of "rates of exchange" the pricing of sexual services as on the boots is ambiguous. There are five different rates of pounds to Slakan money involved, so that Petworth learns that some time with any one of these entrepreneurs could cost him anywhere from the price of a round of ale, to the price of a three-piece suit.
Actually, though, they aren't entrepreneurs. They're state employees, and they make their "real money" from pillow talk -- from going to the Police with any information they get that might be of interest thereto.
Marsh says (and, so far as I understand the jargon, I gather this means that she disapproves) that Bradbury is adopting "money's more persistently misogynistic and mystifying narratives rather than [interrogating] the new political possiobilities demanded by [the] moment."
So it isn't Bradbury's narrative? It's money's narrative?
26 January 2008
Money and Fiction
I've received the book I mentioned in my January 10 entry, "Money, Speculation and Finance in Contemporary British Fiction."
It isn't what I thought it would be. It's both broader in scope and more theoretical. Still, it has passages of interest.
In the first chapter, which is apparently intended to provide historical context by reference to not-so-contemporary British fiction, we get some discussion of Ian Fleming and the Bond novels.
At the start of the novel GOLDFINGER, our protagonist 007 is being entertained by an American millionaire named Du Pont, who wants Bond to work privately for him, investigating a man whom he suspects is cheating at cards. This man turns out to be Auric Goldfinger.
In wooing the famous spy, Mr. Du Pont provides him with a sumptuous meal, which Fleming describes in depth. Sweet shellfish, dry toast, the "slightly burned taste of the melted butter," champagne with the "faintest smell of strawberries," and so forth.
Bond is put off by this display of conspicuous consumption. "Suddenly the idea of ever having another meal like this, or indeed any other meal with Mr. Du Pont, revolted him."
Of course, Bond does expose the Goldfinger card scam, and that serves as a prelude for their more world-shaking conflict to come. But Bond can't bring himself to keep the money that Mr. Du Pont has paid him for this service.
Now: what's that all about? We have to abstract from the Hollywood movie Bond, who doesn't have the puritan streak of the character of the novels. But Fleming is clearly creating some distance here. Not just between the UK and the US, but between Bond and the world that he works to rescue.
Goldfinger represents two sorts of threat -- the political/military one, from the Soviet empire with which MI and the CIA were both jousting -- and the threats posed to the Du Ponts of the world by hoarding. Fleming's novel presumes the Keynesian idea that capitalism requires that consumption be stimulated, that too much saving/hoarding is a threat. (Bond gets a briefing on this from an official with the Bank of England, and the Bank is described as having a spy system of its own.) Goldfinger's vast reserves of hidden gold themselves represent a threat, the Keynesian world-view's analog to the cheating at cards that allows Bond to trip him up early on.
But, back to the clams, toast, and champagne. Bond viscerally (slight pun there) recognizes Du Pont's consumption as a vice, just as in the line of duty he recognizes Goldfinger's hoarding not just as an opposite vice but as a deadly threat to the world he's protecting. His job is to protect Du Pont from Goldfinger -- but he doesn't have to like it.
By the way, here's a 21 year old joke. What do you call a 20-year bond issued in 1987?
Wait for it....
James, of course. [Maturity in '007. Get it?]
It isn't what I thought it would be. It's both broader in scope and more theoretical. Still, it has passages of interest.
In the first chapter, which is apparently intended to provide historical context by reference to not-so-contemporary British fiction, we get some discussion of Ian Fleming and the Bond novels.
At the start of the novel GOLDFINGER, our protagonist 007 is being entertained by an American millionaire named Du Pont, who wants Bond to work privately for him, investigating a man whom he suspects is cheating at cards. This man turns out to be Auric Goldfinger.
In wooing the famous spy, Mr. Du Pont provides him with a sumptuous meal, which Fleming describes in depth. Sweet shellfish, dry toast, the "slightly burned taste of the melted butter," champagne with the "faintest smell of strawberries," and so forth.
Bond is put off by this display of conspicuous consumption. "Suddenly the idea of ever having another meal like this, or indeed any other meal with Mr. Du Pont, revolted him."
Of course, Bond does expose the Goldfinger card scam, and that serves as a prelude for their more world-shaking conflict to come. But Bond can't bring himself to keep the money that Mr. Du Pont has paid him for this service.
Now: what's that all about? We have to abstract from the Hollywood movie Bond, who doesn't have the puritan streak of the character of the novels. But Fleming is clearly creating some distance here. Not just between the UK and the US, but between Bond and the world that he works to rescue.
Goldfinger represents two sorts of threat -- the political/military one, from the Soviet empire with which MI and the CIA were both jousting -- and the threats posed to the Du Ponts of the world by hoarding. Fleming's novel presumes the Keynesian idea that capitalism requires that consumption be stimulated, that too much saving/hoarding is a threat. (Bond gets a briefing on this from an official with the Bank of England, and the Bank is described as having a spy system of its own.) Goldfinger's vast reserves of hidden gold themselves represent a threat, the Keynesian world-view's analog to the cheating at cards that allows Bond to trip him up early on.
But, back to the clams, toast, and champagne. Bond viscerally (slight pun there) recognizes Du Pont's consumption as a vice, just as in the line of duty he recognizes Goldfinger's hoarding not just as an opposite vice but as a deadly threat to the world he's protecting. His job is to protect Du Pont from Goldfinger -- but he doesn't have to like it.
By the way, here's a 21 year old joke. What do you call a 20-year bond issued in 1987?
Wait for it....
James, of course. [Maturity in '007. Get it?]
25 January 2008
Nobody Knows Nuttin' : Latest Proof
Now, with the benefit of hindsight, we can understand some of the volatility of the world's stock exchanges in recent days.
The US markets were closed for M.L. King's birthday on Monday, but the rest of the world's exchanges took steep dives. Then when the markets in the US re-opened on Tuesday morning, they started sharply lower, regaining some of the lost ground as the day went on. On Tuesday, again, sharp loss in the morning, this time with a firm rally in the afternoon -- regaining more than had been lost -- ending the day above Friday's close.
What was going on? There was no dearth of explanations. It involved bond insurers, liquidity problems, jobs statistics, reactions to developments in the US presidential campaign. Phases of the moon and the death of Heath Ledger were only rarely invoked as explanations, but were on standby.
Meanwhile, though, in Paris, officials of that country's second largest bank, an institution that has been around since the era when Paris was briefly run by the communards, were desperately trying to close out the positions of a rogue trader who had lost about 5 billion euros of their money.
The timing and the scale both look right for this to be cause and effect. The Société Générale employee, Jerome Kerviel, had been making huge unauthorized and very speculative trades, and had evaded the bank's risk-management controls by hacking its computer system. Its an old story, though it seldom happens on this scale. Trader hopes to cover his initial losses by doubling down. Heck, if I just lost $100 on a coin toss, I should bet $200 next time, shouldn't I? I could win my money back and still book a gain. If I lose again, so my losses are $300, I can always bet $400 on the third try. Lose again, bet $800. Sooner or later, I've got to win.
Well, no. There is no law of probability that guarantees that even a talented hacker can dig himself out of such a [w]hole. The losing streak can continue until your bankroll is gone.
In this case, it continued until he tried something fancier than usual in his hacking, and raised red flags. Bank officials questioned him throughout the day Saturday.
Monday ... well, you know the rest. Extreme volatility on all those non-US markets. The bank made no official statement on the matter until yesterday, Thursday.
Still, the incident proves that markets are hard to fool. You can fool some of the traders some of the time, and your bank bosses for a long time, but world markets figure it out and start to mark prices down accordingly.
This is why nobody knows nuttin. Even the brightest of us is just a single neuron within the brain which is the world financial market as a whole.
The US markets were closed for M.L. King's birthday on Monday, but the rest of the world's exchanges took steep dives. Then when the markets in the US re-opened on Tuesday morning, they started sharply lower, regaining some of the lost ground as the day went on. On Tuesday, again, sharp loss in the morning, this time with a firm rally in the afternoon -- regaining more than had been lost -- ending the day above Friday's close.
What was going on? There was no dearth of explanations. It involved bond insurers, liquidity problems, jobs statistics, reactions to developments in the US presidential campaign. Phases of the moon and the death of Heath Ledger were only rarely invoked as explanations, but were on standby.
Meanwhile, though, in Paris, officials of that country's second largest bank, an institution that has been around since the era when Paris was briefly run by the communards, were desperately trying to close out the positions of a rogue trader who had lost about 5 billion euros of their money.
The timing and the scale both look right for this to be cause and effect. The Société Générale employee, Jerome Kerviel, had been making huge unauthorized and very speculative trades, and had evaded the bank's risk-management controls by hacking its computer system. Its an old story, though it seldom happens on this scale. Trader hopes to cover his initial losses by doubling down. Heck, if I just lost $100 on a coin toss, I should bet $200 next time, shouldn't I? I could win my money back and still book a gain. If I lose again, so my losses are $300, I can always bet $400 on the third try. Lose again, bet $800. Sooner or later, I've got to win.
Well, no. There is no law of probability that guarantees that even a talented hacker can dig himself out of such a [w]hole. The losing streak can continue until your bankroll is gone.
In this case, it continued until he tried something fancier than usual in his hacking, and raised red flags. Bank officials questioned him throughout the day Saturday.
Monday ... well, you know the rest. Extreme volatility on all those non-US markets. The bank made no official statement on the matter until yesterday, Thursday.
Still, the incident proves that markets are hard to fool. You can fool some of the traders some of the time, and your bank bosses for a long time, but world markets figure it out and start to mark prices down accordingly.
This is why nobody knows nuttin. Even the brightest of us is just a single neuron within the brain which is the world financial market as a whole.
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