Reviewing Trust (October 2024)

Hernan Diaz published Trust in 2022. A year later it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Diaz is an Argentine author who has lived most of his life abroad due in part to the repressive political climate in Argentina from the early 1970s through the early 1980s. Although having lived in the U.S. for the past quarter century, Diaz would also be quite familiar with the economic disasters that have plagued Argentina since the end of the 20^th century—disasters attributable in large part to financiers and speculators. So, while Trust is set against the backdrop of America’s economic collapse in 1929, it should not be surprising that, for Diaz, recent Argentine economic history elevates the personal importance and relevance of this period in American history. Trust is a novel about money and the relationships it mediates. The terms ‘bonds,’ ‘trust’ and ‘futures’ all carry double meanings, each having financially significant references quite different from their common usage. But the novel is also about the authenticity of voice in an amalgamated collection of narratives on the same topic but from incompatible perspectives, none of which commands complete trust.

From the book’s Table of Contents, the reader is forewarned that Trust is a collection of four texts or writings by different authors. First, there is Harold Vanner whose published novel, Bonds, is about the wealthy New York financier, Benjamin Rask, and his wife, Helen—both fictional characters. Second comes the ghostwritten autobiography of Andrew Bevel, the New York financier upon whom Bonds is based. He, too, is fictional for the reader, though with respect to Rask, he is ‘real.’ Third is the memoir of Ida Partenza, the ghostwriter, and last are fragments from Mildred Bevel’s (Andrew’s wife) diary which Ida happens to find years after her collaboration with Andrew Bevel on his autobiography. Unexplained, these various writings happen to be curated by our author, Hernan Diaz.

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So, who is this Harold Vanner whose novel, Bonds, creates the conflict and propels the collected narrative of Trust forward? We never meet the man and occasionally wonder whether he is real or apocryphal. We are after all reading Diaz who is clearly influenced by the great Argentine writer, Jorge Luis Borges. At one point we learn that Ida read some of Vanner’s works as a college student shortly after her employment as Bevel’s ghostwriter. Later, we learn that Bevel, as a means of exacting revenge on Vanner for betraying the memory of Mildred, has removed Bonds from circulation in a manner that only a titan of business could manage. Shouldn't we be suspicious when significant mention of Vanner is so sparse? When we are given only such vague clues as the appearance of his name on the Bevel’s guest list or the initials HV showing up in Mildred’s diary?

Turning to the second text, My Life, how trustworthy is the unfinished autobiography? As Bevel’s initially stated intention in writing his book is to undercut what he considers libelous suggestions in Vanner’s novel, he carefully controls the images projected. Here discrepancies between Vanner’s book and the in-progress autobiography raise questions about whose account can be trusted. Even Ida cannot be sure.

She is shocked when Bevel asserts as fact that Mildred used to relate from memory the entire plots of recently read murder mysteries over dinner. That was the moment Ida realized that her literary embellishments drawn from her own life were filling the lacunae in Bevel's own memory of his beloved 'wife.' It was Ida who had been the murder mystery aficionado and she had often recounted what she read to her father in their small railroad apartment. She had inserted the story in My Life to fill out the sketchy details of Mildred’s existence. So, just how well did Andrew really know his wife? And how does this affect the credibility of his claim that the purpose of his autobiography is to refute Vanner’s book and restore dignity to Mildred’s memory?

In Trust, the reader cannot quite be sure what is fact and what is fiction. References to reading murder mysteries in the ghostwritten autobiography and Ida's memoirs leads the reader to believe that Andrew and Mildred's story is itself a mystery to be deciphered. What is not clear is whether the reader has enough clues to guess correctly. The fact that the reader is never given sufficient and unequivocal answers leaves the reader without certain knowledge—this being intentional on the part of Diaz who clearly invests in Trust some of Borges' tendencies toward the apocryphal, illusory and labyrinthine.

Of all the narrators, Ida is the most informed, yet even she does not truly know the two most important men in her life: Andrew Bevel, the financier capitalist, and her father (no given name provided), a typesetter and ideological anarchist. Neither man completely levels with her, and Diaz does not give us an omniscient view into their minds. For instance, Bevel never acknowledges the role Mildred played in his financial ascent, and Ida’s father hints at but never confirms certain details from his anarchist past back in Italy.

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In this next section, several extended quotes illustrate the different voices of the main characters—the financier capitalist/philanthropist, the quixotic anarchist, the ambivalent ghostwriter and the enigmatic woman in Bevel's shadow.

First is the voice of Harold Vanner. His account is highly critical of the financier capitalist type. Though he writes about the fictional characters, Benjamin and Helen Rask, he is generally assumed to be writing about the ‘real’ Andrew and Mildred Bevel. In the following, Vanner, employing his preferred interpretation of Adam Smith, writes that Rask was seen as “the hand behind the invisible hand” and the financier who had engineered the 1929 crash.

Once this picture became clear enough [the panic of 1929], the public was quick to react. It had been Rask who engineered the whole crash to begin with, people said. Slyly, he had whetted a reckless appetite for debts he knew all along could never be honored. Subtly, he had been dumping his stocks and driving the market down. Artfully, he had leaked rumors and stoked paranoia. Mercilessly, he had overthrown Wall Street and kept it under his thumb with his selling spree the day right before Black Thursday. Everything—the breaks in the market, the uncertainty, the bearishness leading to panic selling, and eventually the crash that would ruin multitudes—had been orchestrated by Rask. His was the hand behind the invisible hand.

But then there is the voice of Andrew Bevel in the language of his ghostwriter, Ida Partenza, regarding the panic of 1929, in which he stresses that he was not the instigator of the panic and the crash and that instead it had been greedy, amateurish speculators and the meddling government through the actions of its inept central bank that had precipitated and exacerbated the financial crisis. It was important for Bevel’s image and legacy that he not be seen as a robber baron but as a shrewd businessman whose private actions in the markets provided a net benefit for society, which, as we are told, had been a fundamental principle guiding the financial activities of his forebears.

I regret to say that my actions failed to sober up the market. More drastic measures were required. I have always been a guardian of public interest, even when it may seem that my actions go against the public interest. My record of long investments in enterprises that led to America’s growth speaks for itself. In 1929, however, disgusted by the depraved greed disrupting the affairs of the Exchange on the one hand and disturbed by the unchecked interventionism of the Federal Reserve on the other, I felt obliged to take a short position. This was not only because it was the reasonable thing to do as a businessman. It was also my attempt, as a concerned citizen, at correcting and purging the market. And just like my forefathers I proved that profit, when responsibly made, is one with the common good.

And next, there is Ida Partenza’s Memoir Remembered, written long after her service as Bevel’s ghostwriter, in which she recounts her father’s radical take on financial capitalism—an anarchist’s worldview far more dangerous and threatening to capitalism than anything in Vanner’s fiction.

I don’t like Marxists, you know that. Their state and their dictatorship. The way they talk, with those bricks of meaning, reducing the world to one single explanation. Like religion. No, I don’t like Marxists. But Marx . . . [h]e was right about this. Money is a fantastic commodity. You can’t eat or wear money, but it represents all the food and clothes in the world. This is why it’s a fiction. And this is what turns it into the measure with which we value all other commodities. What does this mean? It means that money becomes the universal commodity. But remember: money is a fiction; commodities in a purely fantastic form, yes? And this is doubly true for finance capital. Stocks, shares, bonds. Do you think any of these things those bandits across the river buy and sell represent any real, concrete value? No. No, they don’t. Stocks, shares and all that garbage are just claims to future value. So if money is fiction, finance capital is the fiction of a fiction. That’s what all those criminals trade in: fictions.

But it is only at the conclusion of Trust, in Mildred Bevel’s diary, Futures, that the reader gets a different and unexpected account of her husband’s role in 1929. In one of her more lucid moments during her cancer treatment in a Swiss sanatorium far away from media of the day, Mildred reveals a secret that her husband would not have wanted to be known.

In passing, I once told A that our whole financial system relied on 4 people: the keyboard operators in charge of feeding all the quotes into the New York Stock Exchange ticker. It would take 1 of them to bring the whole market to its knees.

Imagine, I said, if 1 of the 4 keyboard operators could be bribed to provide all the quotes before punching them into the machine. The delays would make it possible to act on this information unnoticed.

Some weeks later, Andrew did just that.

It was obvious, looking at the tape.

The scheme lasted only for a few months. But he made an incalculable fortune. And the myth of Bevel grew till he became a god.

I called him a criminal. He said I couldn’t suffer his success.

We barely spoke to each other for about 2 years.

Trust blends multiple perspectives that do not always 'bend and align' with one another let alone the truth, whatever that may turn out to be. The various narrators are all unreliable to some extent and in their own ways, so who does one trust? First, it must be determined who wrote each part. Then, the reader must play the role of detective. Who had motive to distort the truth and which text should the reader privilege as having the most veracity? Is it Harold Vanner, a writer and someone apparently in the Bevel’s social circle; Andrew Bevel, who was arguably concerned mostly about how he would appear in future histories; Ida Partenza, an intelligent and ambitious young woman in her first job; or Mildred Bevel, the ‘beloved’ wife of Andrew Bevel who speaks from a remote cancer clinic?

Having been jolted by stumbling on Mildred’s long-lost diary, Ida secrets it away for further study in order to decipher Mildred’s nearly illegible handwriting. It is no surprise that Ida leaves the Bevel museum—which is what the Bevel house has become—"thinking how lovely it would be to finally hear her voice." These are the last words we hear from Ida. However, the fact that an indecipherable script has been made legible suggests that Ida has indeed finally given Mildred voice. But did she take Mildred's 'voice' at face value? Should we? After all, does Ida, a talented writer, ‘bend and align’ the implicit meaning of selected diary entries to reflect her own preconceived conclusions?

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Because there are four distinct voices narrating throughout the novel, some readers have expressed dissatisfaction with the unevenness of the writing. It is somewhat difficult to read, but that is to be expected given the nature and essence of a novel constructed from loosely linked embedded narratives. And as with any mystery, the reader will not need to be prompted to look back to earlier parts of the novel to review certain details and figure out how the pieces have been put together. Additionally, reading Trust does not require but would be enhanced if one is mindful of Argentina's baleful financial history in the 21^st century and Borges’ wonderfully challenging writing style.