The problem is that while there might well be short term gains in the long run the house always wins. Whether its craps, blackjack or the slots, the odds always favor the house. If you play long enough you lose.

You would think a novel that indulges itself in somewhat lengthy explanations and critiques of economic theories from Adam Smith and David Ricardo through Karl Marx to econometrics and macro-economics, supplemented by doses of biological and astrophysical data might be dreary going. And while there is no doubt that there will be a good many readers who will find these passages dry and daunting, it is equally true that there will be those that will marvel at the chutzpah of an author who deliberately chooses the dismal science as raw material for his work, and even more importantly admire his skill in shaping it into art. On some level, certainly less epic but less digressive as well, it reminds one of the discourses on whales and whaling in Melville’s Moby Dick, discourses that have brought even that venerable voice his share of detractors. A writer takes a gamble when he loads a work of fiction with this kind of baggage–with some readers he will win, unfortunately, no matter how well he manages the material, with some he will lose.

This is all the more unfortunate because Thomas Legendre’s first novel, The Burning, is a rewarding, skillfully controlled piece of work well worth the serious reader’s attention. Its forays into the esoterica of economics and science are integrated functional expressions of both theme and character. Three of the four central figures in the book are academics–two recently ‘doctored’ economists and an astrophysicist. That such people would tend to look at the world in terms of the metaphors and models of their professions is only natural. Logan Smith, the novel’s protagonist, is something of a maverick among economists. Unlike Deck Moore (one has to wonder about Legendre’s choices of character names. There are a Keris and a Dallas still to come. Whatever happened to Bob and Carol, Ted and Alice.) the novel’s putative villain, he isn’t into the professional specialty du jour, econometrics. His concerns are much more humanistic. He is interested in reevaluating economic theories in the light of their effects on society. His doctoral dissertation is a study of Adam Smith attempting to show where the father of laissez faire capitalism went wrong. Not that he is a communist, Marxist theory has its own problems, it is simply that modern economic theory rest on assumptions about resources that ignore certain basic scientific truths that need to be taken into account.

Deck is a pragmatist. He knows which side of the academic bread the butter is spread. He understands the wheeling and dealing necessary to getting ahead even in the hallowed halls of ivy, besides he has goals even beyond the university. Visions of presidential commissions dance in his head. He knows critiques of two hundred and fifty year old theories that have calcified into dogma are not going to get him where he wants to go, no matter how cogent and well reasoned they might be.

Pages: « [ 1 ]  2   3  »