Trust

Here’s the deal: Trust wasn’t on my list. Halfway through The Tin Drum I went on vacation in Taiwan. I finished it faster than expected and had to pick up another book. Eslite didn’t have much to choose from. I went with Trust because it won the Pulitzer Prize. Okay, I thought, it must be good. It wasn’t.

Perhaps the issue is that I didn’t understand the Pulitzer Prize. I thought the prize recognized great works of literature that pushed the bar in some way, just like the National Book Award. I was wrong. The primary difference is that the Pulitzer Prize focuses on American life and often rewards popular, critically acclaimed literature, while the National Book Award highlights artistic merit, frequently championing experimental or diverse works.

Looking back at the list of Pulitzer Prize winners, I’ve read several but enjoyed few. This says more about my reading taste than anything else, yet I feel like there’s less appetite for inventive works of fiction now than in the past.

Anyway, Trust is a pedestrian novel in four parts. Part One is a book within a book written by Harold Vanner. It tells the story of Benjamin Rask, a financier who made money hand over fist, and his hyper-intelligent wife. We learn of their upbringings, how they met, Benjamin’s financial rise, Helen’s health decline, and the poor way in which Benjamin treated Helen in the end.

Part Two is a biography within a book. It tells the story of Andrew Bevel, a financier who, yes, makes money hand over fist. We learn of his life and his wife, Mildred, who plays a minor background role in Andrew’s meteoric rise. Andrew makes money. Mildred supports the arts. Then she dies.

In Part Three we meet Ida Partenza, who is tasked with ghostwriting Andrew’s biography — the biography we read in Part Two. It turns out that Andrew found the book Harold Vanner wrote — the book we read in Part One — extremely distasteful. Harold’s book was clearly based in part on Andrew’s life but told in a hideous way, especially in its portrayal of the relationship between Andrew and Mildred. Andrew basically makes it impossible for people to get their hands on Harold’s book and, with Ida’s help, tells his story his way.

During this section, Ida becomes suspicious of Andrew’s light touch when it comes to his wife. He has little to say other than that she supported the arts and made their home, which is why she seems like a minor background character in his autobiography. Despite her best efforts, Ida never learns much about Mildred’s character. In fact, Andrew invites Ida to make things up.

Part Three also flips forward in time. Several decades after Andrew’s biography is published, and long after his death, Ida is researching Mildred at Bevel’s mansion, which has been turned into a museum. She discovers a small journal tucked away in a book and steals it.

We read that journal in Part Four. It chronicles Mildred’s ailing health. And, ah, the big reveal: Mildred was truly the mastermind behind Andrew’s success in the financial markets.

The book bored me.

I highlighted two short passages:

“Most of us prefer to believe we are the active subjects of our victories but only the passive objects of our defeats. We triumph, but it is not really we who fail—we are ruined by forces beyond our control.”

A truism for sure. I once heard something similar from a jiu jitsu instructor: if we win, it’s skill; if the other guy wins, it’s luck.

“Every life is organized around a small number of events that either propel us or bring us to a grinding halt. We spend the years between these episodes benefitting or suffering from their consequences until the arrival of the next forceful moment. A man’s worth is established by the number of these defining circumstances he is able to create for himself. He need not always be successful, for there can be great honor in defeat. But he ought to be the main actor in the decisive scene in his existence, whether they be epic or tragic.”

There’s truth to that, too. Though my takeaway is that reading Trust will neither propel me nor bring me to a grinding halt. It’s one of those events I will quickly forget.