bookfraud

Unless you avoid the news or human contact of any kind, you know that our nation’s leading investment bankers, ensconced in their wainscoted offices high above Manhattan, are having a bit of trouble in the liquidity department.

These Masters of the Universe made billions upon billions with investments like asset-backed securities and CDOs and currency swaps and interest rate options and hedging "swaptions" and other exotica that mere plebes like you and me will never truly understand. And then they basically fucked everything up.

Without going into too much detail, bankers become so arrogant that they forgot that investments entail this weird concept called "risk." They made tons of money investing in those subprime mortgage thingees everyone seems to be talking about, while forgetting that a big-payoff investment means big risk.

(If this sounds like a buncha mumbo jumbo, think of it this way. Bear Stearns and other investment banks shot up pure heroin, and got, really, really, really shitfaced. They loved getting high so much, they overdosed. Then the drug dealer came a-callin’ with an Uzi and six well-muscled friends, and made Bear Stearns an offer it couldn’t refuse.)

While skewering venal, bloated plutocrats is fun, there is actually a reason for it within the context of this blog. The greatest writers are like great investment bankers: they go for broke, they don’t hold back, and they score big or not at all.

Somebody’s screwed; it’s not the bank

In one way or another, my favorite novels and short stories throw caution to the wind. The writing itself may be restrained; the actual story may or may not be plausible; the dialog or characterizations will smack of the truth. However, in emotional or intellectual terms these writers take chances others couldn’t stomach. A great work of fiction does not fear risk but embraces it.

Think of just about any life-changing book that you’ve read, or look at the list of books on the right: one thing they all have in common is fearlessness. If Salman Rushdie hadn’t had the cajones to go over the top, "Midnight’s Children" would have been a snooze. If Thomas Pynchon hadn’t dared to be so ridiculously intellectual and hopelessly sophomoric, there would have never been "V.," much less "Gravity’s Rainbow." And if Margaret Atwood had not peered into the dark caverns of the soul, "Cat’s Eye" would have been a schlockfest.

But all of them bet the bank on a roll of the literary dice, and created great works of art. Timidity gets you nowhere.

Or consider this: before Rushdie wrote "Midnight’s Children," John Irving wrote "The World According to Garp," and Saul Bellow gave us "The Adventures of Augie March" (risky, messy and glorious all), they wrote books that are considered competitent, tightly written, and blandly cerebral. But you probably can’t name them. 

Risk-taking — and ambition, it’s close cousin — are all-too-often in short supply these days. You see plenty of well-written, "small" works of fiction with small aims and small results. These are all fine and good, for what they’re worth. There’s a place for them on the bookshelf. But nobody ever wrote something that could change a reader’s life without swinging for the fences, throwing deep, shooting three-pointers, or whatever clichéd sports metaphor you choose.

You can even extend the metaphor to book publishing, and not in a good way. The wacko economics of publishing puts a premium on best sellers. That’s why publishing houses are happy to spend six- and seven-figure advances on first-time writers in hopes of bagging a bolt of lightening rather than publishing numerous authors (in investment terms, that would be called  "portfolio diversification").  

 
Took a risk

Of course, the parallels to investment bankers pretty much end at this point. If you write something crappy, it may never see print, and if it does, you may wish it had not.

Unlike an investment banker who basically loses Other People’s Money. Or one who "advises" a company on a merger that goes bad, but still gets 7 percent of the $329 billion price tag. Or a hedge fund manager who runs his hedge fund into the ground while taking a 2 percent management fee and 20 percent of the profits. Maybe a private equity honcho who borrows billions, takes a public company private, skims off fees, lays off thousands, and takes the company public again for a multi-billion dollar profit.

Which makes me seriously wonder about my sanity with this writing thing. So I’m going to become an investment bank. Bookfraud Investment Corp. is now open for business, damn the economy, damn the credit crisis! I promise a 30 percent annual return on your money. Send your cash today! I’ll also take money orders or credit cards, but no personal checks, sorry.