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Indlæser... Trust (2022)af Hernan Diaz
Indlæser...
Bliv medlem af LibraryThing for at finde ud af, om du vil kunne lide denne bog. Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog. Un deslumbrante puzle literario: la misteriosa historia de un magnate de los años veinte en varias versiones que se complementan o contradicen. En los triunfales años veinte, Benjamin Rask y su esposa Helen dominan Nueva York: él, un magnate financiero que ha amasado una fortuna; ella, la hija de unos excéntricos aristócratas. Pero a medida que la década se acerca a su fin, y sus excesos revelan un lado oscuro, a los Rask empiezan a rodearlos las sospechas… Ese es el punto de partida de Obligaciones, una exitosa novela de 1937 que todo Nueva York parece haber leído y que cuenta una historia que puede, sin embargo, contarse de algunas otras formas. Hernán Díaz compone en Fortuna un magistral puzle literario: una suma de voces, de versiones confrontadas que se complementan, se matizan y se contradicen, y, al hacerlo, ponen al lector ante las fronteras y los límites entre la realidad y la ficción, entre la verdad –acaso imposible de encontrar– y su versión manipulada. Fortuna explora los entresijos del capitalismo americano, el poder del dinero, las pasiones y las traiciones que mueven las relaciones personales y la ambición que todo lo malea. The first half of this book was dry and I considered not finishing. The second half picks up considerably and makes up for the first half. The Italian American woman has a far more interesting life than the main couple discussed. I wish there were more details on her. I found myself rolling my eyes over the financial discussion. Anyone who has bothered investing knows that the market cannot be timed. For a book that's supposed to be empowering about the relationship between women and money it's not super empowering at all. I can appreciate a novel that is mostly just an exercise in style. However, I cannot rate this higher than 2 stars based on the enjoyment of reading. Even so, I found the main characters intriguing, which suggests a good writer behind this mess. That is quite an achievement when I take into account my personal disgust for the world of finance and billionaires. If I take this novel simply on the metafictional level; how we tell our stories, how our stories are told by others and why, what is the actual truth - then it just about barely works. As a reader, I am tired of overly ambitious novels that feel unedited. I get how you can get charmed by the idea behind this, but it is a struggle to read this (even if it is done so on purpose) mostly without any reward. It takes a certain type to really like this, and I'm not it. 2.5
Though framed as a novel, “Trust” is actually an intricately constructed quartet of stories — what Wall Street traders would call a 4-for-1 stock split.... In summary “Trust” sounds repellently overcomplicated, but in execution it’s an elegant, irresistible puzzle. The novel isn’t just about the way history and biography are written; it’s a demonstration of that process. By the end, the only voice I had any faith in belonged to Diaz. Trust by Hernan Diaz is one of those novels that's always pulling a fast one on a reader. Take the opening section: You settle in, become absorbed in the story and, then, 100 pages or so later — Boom! — the novel lurches into another narrative that upends the truth of everything that came before.... Trust is all about money, particularly, the flimflam force of money in the stock market, and its potential, as a character says, "to bend and align reality" to its own purposes.... Literary fiction, too, is a fantastic commodity in which our best writers become criminals of the imagination, stealing our attention and our very desires. Diaz, whose last novel, In the Distance, reworked the myths of masculine individualism in the American West, makes an artistic fortune in Trust. And we readers make out like bandits, too. Trust: both a moral quality and a financial arrangement, as though virtue and money were synonymous. The term also has a literary bearing: Can we trust this tale? Is this narrator reliable? ... Taken together, the four parts make “Trust” into a strangely self-reflexive work: strangely, because unlike some metafictional exercises this book does more than chase its own tail. 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. For “Trust” always acknowledges the world that lies outside its own pages. It recognizes the human costs of a great fortune, even though its characters can see nothing beyond their own calculations; they are most guilty when most innocent, most enthralled by the abstraction of money itself. ...a kaleidoscope of capitalism run amok in the early 20th century, which also manages to deliver a biography of its irascible antihero and the many lives he disfigures during his rise to the cream of the city’s crop. Grounded in history and formally ambitious, this succeeds on all fronts. Once again, Diaz makes the most of his formidable gifts Structurally, Diaz’s novel is a feat of literary gamesmanship in the tradition of David Mitchell or Richard Powers. Diaz has a fine ear for the differing styles each type of document requires: Bonds is engrossing but has a touch of the fusty, dialogue-free fiction of a century past, and Ida is a keen, Lillian Ross–type observer. But more than simply succeeding at its genre exercises, the novel brilliantly weaves its multiple perspectives to create a symphony of emotional effects; what’s underplayed by Harold is thundered by Andrew, provided nuance by Ida, and given a plot twist by Mildred. So the novel overall feels complex but never convoluted, focused throughout on the dissatisfactions of wealth and the suppression of information for the sake of keeping up appearances. No one document tells the whole story, but the collection of palimpsests makes for a thrilling experience and a testament to the power and danger of the truth—or a version of it—when it’s set down in print. A clever and affecting high-concept novel of high finance. HæderspriserDistinctionsNotable Lists
Stort anlagt og sofistikeret roman om rigdom, magt og ægteskab. Den er fortalt i fire dele og leger med narrativer, og hvad der er illusion og virkelighed. For læsere af litteratur i verdensklasse. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Indlæser... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit:
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The first part is a short novel, a novella really, about a successful financier and his tragically ill wife and their relationship. There's a lot about money and investing. The second part is about a successful financier and his tragically ill wife and their relationship. This time, the relationship seems much shallower and paternalistic. I finished this second part thinking, wtf? This is the same story as the first, essentially. Why is this book nominated for the Pulitzer? I had to read some reviews to understand that the first part is a novel based on the second part, which is an autobiography. It's very meta. Both parts break the fourth wall, with editorial notes and writerly intentions of things to come. The book has a great deal of self-awareness. I can understand why critics might laud it, since it has an innovative structure and premise. But is it good to read?
As a reader, so far I don't find it engaging. The entire thing is pure exposition. No dialogue, no emotion on the page, no individual scenes. Just the author telling us two different versions of "what happened" between the financier and his wife. There's a certain amount of narrative drive, which I credit to the skill of the author. But it's just not that interesting. Haven't decided yet if I'll go further.