Greed. Money. Power. Given our current financial times, I am surprised more are not speaking about Theodore Dreiser. The Financier is Dreiser’s 1912 novel following his most well known work, Sister Carrie. The Financier is set during the 1860s and '70s, though little dates the work as a whole, for the lead character, Frank Cowperwood, could be any corrupt CEO living on Wall Street today.
Dreiser takes readers into Frank’s early years, noting the young boy’s interest in banking, but it is an early incident upon seeing a squid and a lobster in a tank together that makes the biggest impression upon young Frank, forcing him to wonder just "how is life organized?"
“The squid couldn’t kill the lobster - he had no weapon. The lobster could kill the squid - he was heavily armed. There was nothing for the squid to feed on; the lobster had the squid as prey. What was the result to be?”
Frank learns early that if one is going to thrive, he must aim to be the lobster and not the squid. He sees that money holds power, and so he embarks on a number of early business ventures where he views the men he works for as “nothing more than characters in his eyes” and does so without maliciousness. In fact, Frank isn’t malicious at all - he’s just indifferent towards anything that does not immediately benefit him.
Frank simply has a sense of entitlement and no personal reservations about looking down on others. Looking to satisfy his own immediate interests, he is not someone pondering the country’s current issue with slavery or any issue outside himself. This fact does not make Frank evil, but merely narcissistic and ultimately... realistic. After all, how many people today go to bed worrying over those who might lose their homes to foreclosure or those starving in Third World countries?
Eventually, Frank falls into a loveless marriage, and experiences some tension when he becomes involved with a much younger woman - Aileen, who is the daughter of a business partner. The two work at keeping the affair quiet, but eventually the secret emerges, among a number of other shady practices Frank has been involved in.
Article comments
1 - Nitsan Ben-Horin
The above article ommits to mention the most important fact about this book, that it is a true story, based on the life of railway tycoon Charles T. Yerkes, which was fictionalized into a biographical novel, followed by The Titan & The Stoics, widely known as the Trilogy of Desire. I think it is widely accepted as the best business novel ever written, and to do away with the financial details of the speculations would be to do away with the purpose of the book itself. It is, in fact, astonishing, that Dreiser, not a money person himself, could demonstrate such udnerstanding of the intricacies of corporate finance, and move from business to romance so flawlessly. I think not a little praise should also be given to the philosphical introspection of the lead character that shows Dreiser's uncanny grasp of the human character.