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A review by ergative
A Conspiracy of Paper by David Liss
3.25
I went through a huge David Liss phase back in . . . 2008 or so? 2010? Anyway, he's written more since then, so I thought to give him another look, starting with a reread of this book, the first Benjamin Weaver story. And . . . he's fine. This is a perfectly fine historical thriller about stock market shenanigans, which is perhaps slightly more ambitious in its aims than its execution.
The ambitious aims revolve around changes in thought that characterized the early 18th century, specifically the rise in deductive reasoning, courtesy of the Scottish Enlightenment; and the shift in economics to see bank notes as equally valuable as gold and silver, even though they represented (at the time, pre-fiat currency) nothing more than an institution's promise to pay gold and silver later. Wealth changes from a piece of metal to people's beliefs and trust in a piece of paper. These ideas combine in the rise of the stock market: paper can be incredibly valuable, if it represents the promise of a company to pay dividends to shareholders, but only if the value of the paper rises (which it will only do if people believe it to be valuable); so decisions in stock-market purchases are themselves a game in probabilities. And his decision to have our narrator be a lapsed Jew offers an additional side of the narrative: he is an observer, but not quite a participant, in both Jewish and Christian London of the era, at a time when Jews have a very particular relation to finance. (Liss really likes Jewish narrators.)
But somehow, although it all sounds very erudite and thoughtful when I describe it, Liss's engagement with these ideas feels... clumsy? A little obvious? There's a Scottish doctor who name-drops Enlightenment names and explains didactically what it means to reason from probabilities, and why people are so uneasy at the economic shift from hard currency to promises and paper currency. Wikipedia tells me that this was actually his first book, so possiblly it's just first-novel syndrome. I think I'll continue to read his Benjamin Weaver books and see if they get better.
The ambitious aims revolve around changes in thought that characterized the early 18th century, specifically the rise in deductive reasoning, courtesy of the Scottish Enlightenment; and the shift in economics to see bank notes as equally valuable as gold and silver, even though they represented (at the time, pre-fiat currency) nothing more than an institution's promise to pay gold and silver later. Wealth changes from a piece of metal to people's beliefs and trust in a piece of paper. These ideas combine in the rise of the stock market: paper can be incredibly valuable, if it represents the promise of a company to pay dividends to shareholders, but only if the value of the paper rises (which it will only do if people believe it to be valuable); so decisions in stock-market purchases are themselves a game in probabilities. And his decision to have our narrator be a lapsed Jew offers an additional side of the narrative: he is an observer, but not quite a participant, in both Jewish and Christian London of the era, at a time when Jews have a very particular relation to finance. (Liss really likes Jewish narrators.)
But somehow, although it all sounds very erudite and thoughtful when I describe it, Liss's engagement with these ideas feels... clumsy? A little obvious? There's a Scottish doctor who name-drops Enlightenment names and explains didactically what it means to reason from probabilities, and why people are so uneasy at the economic shift from hard currency to promises and paper currency. Wikipedia tells me that this was actually his first book, so possiblly it's just first-novel syndrome. I think I'll continue to read his Benjamin Weaver books and see if they get better.