My reading of The Big Short, was drawn out a bit, not because the book wasn't good but because while I was reading it I was also watching The Civil War on PBS. Although the situations are completely different, there are similarities that made my blood boil.
The book was entertaining and informative. Lewis is a good writer, and his technique of portraying the financial crisis and the mortgage-backed security market through a small set of social misfits who saw the huge potential downside of the market was a good choice. I found the story gripping, and I also found that Lewis's circular story-telling technique was helpful in painting an understandable picture of a system out of control and a society on the verge of collapse. And yes, I am comparing the financial markets to a society in and of themselves, a society that has the potential to take everything else with it.
Although the main characters around which this story evolved were social, and to some extent financial market, outsiders, and although in the end their gamble was right and they made a lot of money, the fact of that they were right did not make them any happier. There is a message in that. Sometimes the view is sharper from the outside looking in. At the same time society does not necessarily want to be reminded of its failures, and betting against one's society and a large driving force of culture may be exhilirating, but being right is not always an uplifting experience. Even when we know we are right, sometimes we just want to be proven wrong, and even in their success, there is a good bit of discomfort in Lewis's portrayal of his main characters after the crash. Words of warning perhaps. Words that are basically unheeded, as it is quite evident that although the crash occurred, there have been no fundamental changes in the mind set and the systems that gave birth to the cataclysm. A system that rewards people for callous indifference, for taking risks without regard to the consequences, that emphasizes short term gain over long term growth, that rewards callousness and outright greed is a bad system. The people who get caught up in that system are not necessarily bad people, but the system corrupts. People will follow rewards. The mindset of making money by screwing someone else, ends up being a system in which most people are screwed. The entire idea that one can make money by screwing people, and that people who practice this mindset live at the pinnacle of our society should give us pause. There is nothing different here from Feudal lords and kings who had little regard for the serfs who maintained their land. There is nothing different here from wealthy plantation owners who plunged a society into a war it could not win just so they could maintain their protected lifestyle built as it was on bondage and indifference to humanity. Except that this time however little blood was shed and the perpetrators, for the most part, came out ahead.
After reading Lewis I needed a novel. I was hoping for something uplifting, but really I just grabbed something off the shelf. I picked up Chasing Fireflies by Charles Martin, a book I had originally purchased on a visit to Knoxville and never gotten around to reading. I knew nothing about the author or the novel, but the prose and the story had intrigued me.
It is a good novel. The novel meanders a bit between past and present, intertwining the stories of the three main characters, but Martin handles this well and effectively. The characters are well drawn with depth in the relationships between them. The characters draw the reader in and although the ending was somewhat redemptive, I give the author credit for not resolving all the story lines and leaving somethings unexplained and unresolved.
There were some downsides. There are some glaring factual errors. Sometimes the pacing was off a bit. Much of the direction of the book is pretty predictable, but in the end this is not really a book about the plot but about the characters and their development, about surfaces and shadows, about what is hidden and what is revealed, about the relationship between fathers and sons specifically, but also about relationships in general, and how we are all looking for someone or something to fill the hole in our chest. Often we are looking in the wrong place. If we are lucky we find it. If we are very lucky we find it has been with us all along.
But the story doesn't get to its resolution easily. There is much pain, fear, despair and general nastiness in this book. It does not paint a rosy picture of the human condition, and yet it is a book filled with hope, a reminder that there is hope. I found it deeply enjoyable and deeply satisfying.
