SECRETS OF GREAT ART REVIEW SERIES

The true circularity here lies in the workings of capital, in a monetary system so self-referential that it has forgotten what Diaz himself remembers. Taken together, the four parts make вЂњTrustвЂќ into a strangely self-reflexive work: strangely, because unlike some metafictional exercises this book does more than chase its own tail. вЂњImagine the relief of finding out that one is not the one one thought one was.вЂќ Those words are as true of this exhilarating and intelligent novel as they are of the mysterious character who speaks them, a figure hidden at the center of moneyвЂ™s web.

SECRETS OF GREAT ART REVIEW SERIES

вЂњBondsвЂќ sets the tune on which the novelвЂ™s three other sections play variations, and IвЂ™ve concentrated on it in order to avoid any spoilers for much of the novelвЂ™s pleasure derives from its unpredictability, from its section-by-section series of formal surprises. DiazвЂ™s first book was a study of Jorge Luis Borges, and like the Argentine master he has the whole literary past at his fingertips.

So add Henry James to Wharton, and Thomas Mann too. But no talent is without its price, and hers will eventually lead her to a Swiss sanitarium. SheвЂ™s interested in the arts and philanthropy, and she also has strange talents of her own, including a memory so faultless that after a brief glance she can recite from two randomly chosen books at once, alternating them sentence by sentence. His choice is a young woman named Helen Brevoort, an American girl from an old Knickerbocker family who has been raised in Europe. Still, the rich man does eventually discover that he is in want of a wife. ItвЂ™s a disorienting but effective way to present a character who seems almost entirely without an inner life of his own, whose whole being lies in anticipating the clickety-click of a ticker tape. In both books, he reports on his charactersвЂ™ inner lives instead of dramatizing them, and in VannerвЂ™s hands especially, the result reads more like a biography than a novel: a narrative without dialogue, in which RaskвЂ™s life is given to us more often in summary than in scenes. Diaz relies in contrast on a far one, and his sentences are at once cool, deliberate and dispassionate. Some writers capture their charactersвЂ™ thoughts through what creative writing teachers call a close third person. His superb first novel, вЂњ In the Distance,вЂќ a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, is set in the American West during the Gold Rush, and its language creates a world in which both physical and psychic space seem stretched. вЂ¦ The larger the operation, the further removed he was from its concrete details.вЂќ DiazвЂ™s own prose keeps an antiseptic distance of its own, no matter who his narrator might be. It moves, eats, grows, breeds, falls ill and may die. Instead he views вЂњcapital as an antiseptically living thing. Rask will become a virtuoso of money, but he never connects the tunes he plays to any effect they might have on the world outside. We wonвЂ™t know who he is until the later sections, many pages after вЂњBondsвЂќ is over letвЂ™s call him a forgotten novelist, whose case has been properly handled. ItвЂ™s called вЂњBondsвЂќ and presented as a novel written in the third person by someone named Harold Vanner. The term also has a literary bearing: Can we trust this tale? Is this narrator reliable? Diaz breaks the book into four sections, and the title of the first one is similarly ambiguous, echoing that of the whole work. Trust: both a moral quality and a financial arrangement, as though virtue and money were synonymous. ThatвЂ™s the hope anyway - or the fear, depending on whose side youвЂ™re on - and thatвЂ™s the world Hernan Diaz explores in вЂњTrust,вЂќ his intricate, cunning and consistently surprising second novel. The crime has been вЂњforgotten, mind you, because itвЂ™s been properly handled,вЂќ the bodies neatly disposed of and the bank notes washed clean. Balzac puts those words in the mouth of a master criminal, and then adds a final twist. Of course, we also have to consider whoвЂ™s speaking. Innovation? Maybe, but take a closer look at the human costs and natural resources needed to bring ideas to market. After all, what counts as an obvious explanation? The ownership of land? BalzacвЂ™s society might have thought so now we ask how that land was first acquired. вЂњThe secret of all great fortunes, when thereвЂ™s no obvious explanation for them, is always some forgotten crime.вЂќ These words come from вЂњLe PГЁre GoriotвЂќ (1835), HonorГ© de BalzacвЂ™s great novel about the mysteries of Paris, and in English theyвЂ™re most often quoted without the qualifying phrase in the middle.

Secrets of great art review