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Hernan Diaz Biography

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“Kitsch. Can't think of Engl. trans. for this word. A copy that's so proud of how close it comes to the original that it believes there's more worth in this closeness than in originality itself. "It looks like...!" Imposture of feeling over actual emotion; sentimentality over sentiment. Kitsch can also be in the eye: "The sunset looks like a painting!" Because artifice is now the ultimate standard, the original (sunset) has to be turned into a fake (painting), so that the latter may provide the measure of the former's beauty. Kitsch is always a form of inverted Platonism, prizing imitation over archetype. And in every case, it's related to an inflation of aesthetic value, as seen in the worst kind of kitsch: "classy" kitsch. Solemn, ornamental, grand. Ostentatiously, arrogantly announcing its divorce from authenticity.”

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“Even if at the time there was an established mercantile class in New York and the city revolved to a large extent around business, it was also understood that it was in poor taste to talk about money. Fur-thermore, involvement in any form of industry was frowned upon. A true gentleman was supposed to be a man of leisure. But the financial enterprises that made such leisure possible were not to be discussed in society. This put my great-grandfather in an awkward place. While his services were greatly appreciated he was also shunned by those who benefited from them. It would take three generations to begin to correct this hypocritical tendency, not yet fully overcome.”

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“Because what she dreaded now, ever since that walk down Lexington Avenue, was that the illness that had possessed, transformed, and consumed her father might also be at work in her brain. She could feel herself think differently and knew that, in the end, it did not matter whether this feeling was based on reality or fantasies. What mattered was that she was unable to stop thinking about her thoughts. Her speculations reflected one another, like parallel mirrors- and, endlessly, each image inside the vertiginous tunnel looked at the next wondering whether it was the original or a reproduction. This, she told herself, was the beginning of madness. The mind becoming the flesh for its own teeth.”

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“—El dinero. ¿Qué es el dinero? Bienes de consumo en forma de pura fantasía. —Un asentimiento solemne de la cabeza, el ceño repentinamente fruncido, un suspiro-. No me gustan los marxistas, ya lo sabes. Ni su Estado ni su dictadura. Ni su forma de hablar, con esas explicaciones en bloque, reduciendo el mundo a un argumento único. Igual que la religión. No, no me gustan los marxistas. Pero Marx... —Y volvía a poner aquella cara, como si lo estuviera torturando una visión demasiado hermosa—. Tenía razón en una cosa. El dinero es una mercancía fantástica. Una fantasía. Ni lo puedes comer ni te abriga, pero representa toda la comida y toda la ropa del mundo. Por eso es una ficción. Y eso mismo lo convierte en el patrón con el que valoramos todas las mercancías. ¿Qué comporta eso? Pues que el dinero se convierte en el bien de consumo universal. Pero recuerda: el dinero es una ficción; bienes de consumo en forma de pura fantasía, ¿entiendes? Y eso es doblemente cierto en el caso del capital financiero. Las acciones, los valores, los bonos. ¿Crees que alguna de las cosas que compran y venden esos bandidos del otro lado del río representan algún valor real y concreto? No, para nada. Las acciones, los valores bursátiles y toda esa porquería no son más que promesas de un valor futuro. Así pues, si el dinero es una ficción, el capital financiero es la ficción de una ficción. Con eso comercian todos esos criminales: con ficciones.”

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“If asked, Benjamin would probably have found it hard to explain what drew him to the world of finance. It was the complexity of it, yes, but also the fact that he viewed capital as an antiseptically living thing. It moves, eats, grows, breeds, falls ill, and may die. But it is clean. This became clearer to him in time. The larger the operation, the further removed he was from its concrete details. There was no need for him to touch a single banknote or engage with the things and people his transaction affected. All he had to do was think, speak, and, perhaps, write. And the living creature would be set in motion, drawing beautiful patterns on its way into realms of increasing abstraction, sometimes following appetites of its own.”

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“In more than one way, Sheldon Lloyd embodied most of the aspects of the financial world that Benjamin abhorred. For Sheldon, as for most people, money was a means to an end. He spent it. Bought things. Houses, vehicles, animals, paintings. Talked loudly about them. Traveled and threw parties. Wore his wealth on his body his skin smelled different every day; his shirts were not pressed but new; his coats shone almost as much as his hair. He brimmed with that most conventional and embarrassing of qualities- "taste." Rask would look at him, thinking only an employee would spend the money someone else gave to him in such a fashion: looking for relief and freedom. It was precisely because of Sheldon Lloyd's frivolity that Benjamin found him useful. His assistant was a shrewd trader, yes, but Rask also understood that he personified the stereotype of what many of his clients and fleeting associates considered to be "a success.”

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“Fiction harmless? Look at religion. Fiction harmless? Look at the oppressed masses content with their lot because they have embraced the lies imposed on them. History itself is just a fiction-a fiction with an army. And reality? Reality is a fiction with an unlimited budget. That's what it is. And how is reality funded? With yet another fiction: money. Money is at the core of it all. An illusion we've all agreed to support. Unanimously. We can differ on other matters, like creed or political affiliations, but we all agree on the fiction of money and that this abstraction represents concrete goods. Any goods. Look it up. It's all in Marx. Money, he says, is not one thing. It is, potentially, all things. And for this reason it is unrelated to all things.”

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