Part 3 of 'Trust' is a memoir by Ida Partenza, a poor young New Yorker whose émigré father is a diehard Italian communist and anticapitalist. Incensed at what he sees as defamatory falsehoods in the novel based on his life, Bevel in Part 2 pens a book called 'My Life.' It is a dull effort, told in outline form, with tantalizing parts indicated only in notes: 'add colorful anecdotes,' 'the incident on the riverbank,' hostile political conditions.'īevel insists (suspiciously often) that his schemes played no part in the 1929 stock-market crash or the Great Depression.īevel recalls his late wife in the blandest of chauvinist platitudes, a signal that a mystery awaits. This 'fictional' story established, Diaz is just getting started with his imbricated tale. Part One ends as Rask takes her to a wacky Swiss sanatorium that only speeds her agonizing demise. As his fortune skyrockets in the 1920s, Helen's health declines. He lavishes praise on his wife, puts her on a pedestal, but one in the lesser gallery of supportive, graceful, attentive, almost childlike women.

Rask marries highly intelligent Helen Brevoort, a character based on Bevel's wife, Mildred Howland. Rask, modeled on millionaire financier Andrew Bevel (who seeks to tell his own story in Part 2) is less a hissing serpent than a sanctimonious, entitled, free-market booster who inherits from his wealthy father and grandfather the solidly Republican belief 'that self-interest, if properly directed, need not be divorced from the common good.' The isolated, self-sufficient nature of speculation spoke to his character and was a source of wonder and an end in itself.'

Rask 'became fascinated by the contortions of money - how it could be made to bend back on itself to be force-fed its own body. The one-percenter here is Benjamin Rask, hero of the popular 1938 novel 'Bonds' by Harold Vanner that comprises Part 1 of 'Trust.' In the go-go 1920s, Rask, who is among the country's richest men, was no lumber or railroad baron but rather a reclusive math savant adept at market manipulations that made his fortune grow exponentially. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.ĭiaz's ingenious new fiction, told in four overlapping parts, challenges conventional story lines of another favorite American theme: capitalism and the accumulation of vast wealth. Published in 2017 by Minneapolis' Coffee House Press, his western adventure slyly critiques cherished myths about westward expansion in the mid-19th century. Those unfamiliar with Hernan Diaz's remarkable debut have that novel, 'In the Distance,' to look forward to.

Hernan diaz in the distance