Hernan Diaz - Trust (Riverhead Books, 2022) ****

I liked this book. For the simple reason that it tells the same story from four different perspectives, each in its own style and its own angle of approach, and each with its own agenda. 

It is the story of a young woman, Mildred Bevel, who marries the very wealthy Andrew Bevel, who even during the Great Depression and the crash of Wall Street, managed to out-manoeuvre and outperform everybody else and becoming excessively rich, even to the extent that some claim that he caused the crash himself in order to have more profit and wealth. 

One story is a book written by the journalist Harold Vanner, who attacks the rich financier. The second story is an unfinished manuscript representing the perspective of Bevel, and written by Ida Partenza as dictated by Bevel. The third story is written many years later by the same Ida Partenza, the daughter of an Italian anarchist who ends up as a personal assistant to Bevel, and who tries to reconstruct what actually happened so many years before by digging up the archives the rich man, including the letters of Mildred Bevel. The last story are the letters and scraps of paper by Mildred Bevel herself, little scards of information that shed light on what really happened. 

The story is full of tragedy, honesty and dishonesty, love and betrayal, yet at the same time a mystery novel, because as the reader you feel that not everything is being said, you are confronted with such opposing opinions that you wonder what might be the reality behind the words. 

The writing is excellent, the positions clear, the comments on society and our moral viewpoints. In Bevel's opinion ...

"(...) as any true professional will confirm, it is impossible for one single person or group to control the market. The picture of a cigar-smoking cabal pulling the strings of Wall Street from a drawing room is ludicrous. On October 24, known as Black Thursday, an as­tounding 12,894,650 shares were sold off at the New York Stock Ex­change. On Monday 28, prices kept plunging. The Dow experienced its most drastic fall in history, sinking 13 per cent or 38.33 points in one trading session. The following day, Black Tuesday, all records were shattered when 16,410,030 shares were dumped on the floor. The tape was delayed two and a half hours at the close. These vast numbers indeed confirm that the market was facing forces larger than one man, pool or consortium. 

At the end ofit all, the Dow had dropped 180 points, almost exactly what it had gained over the deranged summer months. Over half of the brokerage loans had been pulled. In this avalanche of liquidation there were no takers, regardless of price. By then I had closed all my positions, and it gives me a certain satisfaction to say that by covering my shorts I was able to step in and provide at least some relief to a multitude of sellers in dire need of a buyer. 

My actions safeguarded American industry and business. I pro­tected our economy from unethical operators and destroyers of confi­dence. I also shielded free enterprise from _the dictatorial presence of the Federal Government. Did I turn a profit from these actions? No doubt. But so will, in the long run, our nation, freed from both market piracy and state intervention".(p.185)

The funny thing is that through the technique of the various perspectives, Diaz can comment on his own writing in the first book through the eyes of Ida Partenza: 

"As I read on, however, the prose itself rather than the content be­came the center of my attention. It was unlike the books they had made me read at school and had nothing to do with the mysteries I used to check out of the library. Later, when I finally went to college, I would be able to trace Vanner's literary influences and consider his novel from a formal point of view (even if he was never assigned reading for any of the courses I took, since his work was out of print and already quite unavailable). Yet back then I had never experienced anything like that language. And it spoke to me. It was my first time reading some­thing that existed in a vague space between the intellectual and the emotional. Since that moment I have identified that ambiguous territory as the exclusive domain of literature. I also understood at some point that this ambiguity could only work in conjunction with extreme discipline-the calm precision of Vanner's sentences, his unfussy vo­cabulary, his reluctance to· deploy the rhetorical deviees we identify with "artistic prose" while still retaining a distinctive style. Lucidity, he seems to suggest, is the best hiding place for deeper meaning­ much like a transparent thing stacked in between others. My literary taste has changed since then, and Bonds has been displaced by other books. But Vanner gave me my first glimpse of that elusive region between reason and feeling and made me want to chart it in my own writing. "(p. 246)

It is great reading, also the subtle packaging of the ideas, the deliberate camouflage of politically incorrect statements, which in the end is only for the reader to deal with, to try to understand, to connect and to appreciate. 

"A nation's prosperity is based on nothing but a multitude of ego­isms aligning until they resemble what is known as the common good. Get enough selfish individuals to converge and act in the same direc­tion, and the result looks very much like a collective will or a common cause. But once this illusory public interest is. at work, people forget an all-important distinction: that my needs, desires and cravings may mirror yours does not mean we have a shared goal. It merely means we have the same goal. This is a crucial difference. I will only cooperate with you as long as it serves me. Beyond that, there can only be rivalry or indifference." 

He took two or three shallow spoonfuls. Having soup made him look old and weak. 

"There's iiothing heroic about defending other people's interests just because they happen to coincide with yours. Cooperation, when its objective is personal gain, should never be confused with solidarity. Don't you agree?" He seldom wanted my opinion. 

"I think I do." And I think I thought I did.  

"True idealists, in contrast, care about the welfare of others above and especially against their own interests. If you enjoy your work or profit from it, how can you be sure you're truly doing it for others and not yourself? Abnegation is the only road that leads to the greater good. But you don't need me to tell you this. It's something you must have learned from your father's doctrines and his example." (p.334)

But it is not a book about economics, it is not a book about morality or greed, as I read in many comments, it is a novel about human interaction, about integrity and respect, about what is true and what is not true. The real main character of the book is Mildred Bevel. She is the mystery. She is the one person that everything else revolves around. It is about the possibility to be yourself, and to be seen as yourself by the outside world, and not as the result of somebody else's perception.