The Financier is certainly an excellent book, but like the lead character, it is not without its flaws. Parts could have certainly been trimmed, and the love triangle among Frank, his much younger lover Aileen, and his wife Lillian could at times dip into soap-opera tendencies. While a well-written and excellent portrayal of greed, The Financier falls just slightly short of his great earlier novel Sister Carrie, though Dreiser’s best skills remain those involving character insights and their mechanical indifference felt towards others. Just as the young Frank viewed his early bosses as “nothing more than characters,” note how he views the women in his life:
- Cowperwood looked at his wife with unflinching eyes ... She was no longer attractive physically, and intellectually she was not Aileen’s equal ... she was lacking in certain social graces. Aileen was by no means vastly better, but she was still young and amenable and adaptable, and could still be improved.
Even the women in his life he views more as business ventures than people. Yet the sad thing is, this is very common among our shallow culture. Empathy and sympathy simply do not exist for some, and there are many big names today one could compare Frank Cowperwood to. One can say he is despicable, but he is not unusual in his despicable nature. In fact, he is just like everyone else within his calculated cosmos, though he was just unlucky and got caught. And that is what he regrets - not his crimes. The key to succeeding is to stay lucky and turn everyone around you into a fearful squid, leaving them with nothing to wait for, except the inevitable pinch from the claws of power. Just ask my old boss. Thankfully I left that job years ago.
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.