Lea's Reviews > Trust

”One’s reality is another’s delusion.”

In the complexities of human perception, one's reality often serves as the elusive counterpart to another's delusion. We all grapple with the fine balance between subjectivity and the quest for objective truth, assuming one believes in its existence.
”Trust” is an interesting experimental novel that endeavors to navigate the labyrinthine corridors of perception, trying to echo the works of literary greats in the process. Diaz boldly embarks on an ambitious quest to weave a postmodern tapestry within the traditional fabric of the American novel, and sometimes disappointingly falls flat in the process.

Rooted in the opulence and fervor of 1920s New York, his narrative is evidently inspired by Wharton and Fitzgerald, immersing itself in the quintessential American dream—an ethos of egoistical capitalism and individualism espoused by the enigmatic and highly controversial Ayn Rand. Rand is often hated for openly verbalizing the core beliefs that drive the modern world.
Within this milieu, status and purpose are found in the Gatsbyan pursuit of wealth, a narrative where money, in its irrational accumulation, makes the very fabric of reality.
If you are enough entrenched in self-serving maxims, you too can live the American dream and be the ideal of a “self-made” man.

The central figures of the novel, Andrew and Helen Bevel, a New York financier and his wife, stand as the embodiment of this ethos possessing wealth surpassing the GDP of entire nations. Money, in Diaz's narrative, transcends its material constraints, evolving into a numinous force that purchases not only worldly goods but the respect and heroic stature coveted by society. It purchases a new version of reality, a promise of a new version of self.

In a philosophical reverie, Diaz contemplates the metaphysical underpinnings of money and its entanglement with the power structures of finance, connecting its ontology to considerations about inequality and other real-life issues. Money often deemed the most intimate and private of subjects, becomes the focal point of introspection.

“Money. What is money?” he would mutter to himself. “Commodities in a purely fantastic form.”

What is the thing that makes money rule all and what makes it create such mythical creatures as Musk, Bezos, Gates, or anyone who accumulates wealth above all measure?
The possession of substantial wealth transcends mere affluence; it constitutes a multidimensional state that extends beyond material opulence. In the modern world, rich people become saints of capitalism on whose altar many will bow their knees in restless pursuit of the obsession of more. An insatiable hunger lurks beneath the veneer of ambition. We crave more—more recognition, more possessions, more moments of fleeting ecstasy. It's the ceaseless pursuit of the 'I,' the insistent tug of a selfhood hungry for validation in a marketplace teeming with competing egos.
The novel's thematic core delves into the symbiotic relationship between money and fiction, unveiling the role of wealth and power in ”bending and aligning reality itself” to one’s will. In the labyrinth of egoistic capitalism, the appetite for more is not merely a preference; it's a manifesto, a declaration of existence in a world that measures worth in quantifiable increments. We navigate this societal bazaar with a shopping cart of desires, each acquisition a testament to our standing in the grand bazaar of self-importance.

Yet, in this relentless pursuit, we may find ourselves ensnared in the paradox of plenty—amidst abundance, a gnawing emptiness persists. The 'more' we accumulate becomes a fleeting mirage, dissipating just as we approach its shimmering allure.

”Trust” delves into the trap of the human spirit that money represents—a modern-day holy grail, a philosopher's stone, that fails to deliver to promise of ecstasy and transfiguration. The narrative prods readers to ponder the transformative power of immense fortune and its potential to shape any future one wants, or thinks they want. The illusion of wealth becomes shattered in rich man's dystopian future as a poignant reflection on the isolation it begets—a lonely existence where the blanket of one's public image serves as the sole comfort, rendering the individual a mere projection of society's idea of success and freedom, without the person's grasp of the true essence of those values.

”So if money is fiction, finance capital is the fiction of a fiction. That's what all those criminals trade in: fictions... Money is at the core of it all. An illusion we've all agreed to support. Unanimously.”

The tragic narrative arc of Andrew Bevel, reminiscent of Gatsby's ill-fated pursuit, unfolds as a pursuit of his own ghostly image. Wealth begets the power to construct false narratives that offer a semblance of freedom from the judgments of others. Yet, like Gatsby, the wealth fails to liberate him from the shackles of self-deception and a reluctance to confront the fundamental truths of his existence. Yes, as Bevel and Gatsby, one can have all the worldly power and wealth, and still be overwhelmed and riddled with shame, desperately clinging to other people's perception of themselves to the point of addiction. The more accolades amassed, the more self-hate seems to gather in the shadowy recesses of the psyche, a paradoxical companion to the glitz and glamour.

They, adorned in the regalia of influence, find themselves desperately clutching to the perceptions of others as if they were a lifeline. It's an addiction, an insidious yearning for external validation to stave off the encroaching tide of self-doubt. The more eyes applaud, the more hollow the applause seems to ring. In the pursuit of worldly triumphs, the corridors of power become a labyrinth of self-deception.

As the narrative unfolds in a Rashomonian structure, Diaz probes the essential question: Whose narrative should we Trust?

In the metafictional legacy of Borges and Calvino, the novel fragments into four different parts with distinct narratives and voices that are in communication with each other. Each part interrogates the reliability of the other, creating a literary kaleidoscope that challenges the reader's perception. The narrators of almost all parts either are or could be considered unreliable with unpure motives.

There is also a shift in literary style, the first part being a self-proclaimed hommage to Warthon, Henry James and Fitzgerald, but in reality, landing more closely to the style of Taylor Jenkins Raid than the literary titans.

The second part is meant to be informative and dry, written by Ida, Bevel's ghostwriter, a fabricated reality of what our protagonist wanted to be the truth about him and his wife’s life, inspired by the autobiographical style of great men of American history that Bevel wholeheartedly wants to be remembered as.

In the third part, a memoir by Ida, Bevel’s ghostwriter, more truth is presumingly revealed, and in Ida’s memoir, the writing style becomes more modern, philosophical and reflective. Marx is mentioned as Diaz’s influence and this section gives a commentary on capitalism and its leftist critique in the voice of Ida's anarchist father.

Here the other fundamental idea of a novel is revealed - the greatness of women hidden in history written by men. The bending of a woman’s character to fit into the myth the man in her life needed for himself. Complicated search for the truth of women’s lives and their own voices in men male-dominated world. But Ida has many motives for being unreliable, emotionally involved, and appalled by male narratives that dominate the world. Her writing is inspired by detective fiction she adored in youth, by Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers: “These women showed me I did not have to conform to the stereotypical notions of the feminine world.… They showed me that there was no reward in being reliable or obedient: The reader’s expectations and demands were there to be intentionally confounded and subverted.”

The grand finale of the book is a disjointed narrative of dying Mildred Bevel's morphine-addled diary, which serves as the crescendo of revelation—her nonlinear perspective where past, present, and future coalesce in a feverish dreamscape.
Influenced by feminist literary giants such as Woolf, Rhys and Lessing, this section unveils the untold stories of women relegated to the shadows of history—a secret creative force behind the lives of men.

“Short selling is folding back time. The past making itself present in the future.”

In the tradition of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper this section plays in the idea of women locked behind doors which is the generative power of men’s lives. The genius women whose voices were marginalized, silenced, made appear mad like a woman in the attic through history - voices of women we may only hear distorted - through the stories of their successful husbands or in no way at all. The genius of women who rule from the shadows, often unclaimed and unrecognized by the collective, still contains the intellectual fuel for men. Helen’s voice brings the unnamed and untold stories buried beneath American financial power.
Here achievement and money are not essential - being is.

In the metanarrative of the novel, the same question is posed again and again, whose narrative do we Trust?
From what I gathered, all the readers seem to consider the last part of the novel it great reveal - a reveal of the truth so concealed in previous voices. But I can’t help but wonder why.
Because the last two sections are written by women? Because they are written in a more appealing, literary, postmodern style? Because the last part was written by a dying woman? We often forget that women also have their own mythologies of their identities - sometimes containing inflation of their own. They can also be threatened by the power of men and create their own grandiose narrative of themselves. Marriages are complex and our perceptions of ourselves as partners are full of fallacies.

Reader's reactions seem to attest that we can be inclined to put the subjectivity of women at the altar of truth, equalizing it with objective reality. The marginalization of certain narratives in history doesn't inherently imbue them with an infallible veracity. The authoritative gaze of men has long shaped history, yet what contemporary forces dictate our narrative preferences, tethering us to one story over another? Is our embrace of fiction marked by an unsettling ease, a tendency to accept without due scrutiny? The fallacy in our convictions, whether about heroes, victims, or the truth we hold, demands a painful awareness—a call for unwavering critical examination.

We seem to be in our own inner conflict of wanting to believe the powerful but also, especially in recent eras, being inclined to take a side of those marginalized, traumatized, the underdogs, those who are sick and suffer even when our logic tells us they hold important, but only one piece of the puzzle of reality, equally locked in their own subjective experience.

It is important to bring the validity of the plurality of narratives that chart the complexity of truth, in history much as in the present day. While reading this book you can also observe how easily it is to discard the narrative of the person you don’t like, the person who has what you don’t have, the authoritarian person of wealth and power. We often too easily trash the objectives of people and groups we have something against as our hidden jealousy conceals our own drive to power - forgetting that we are discarding sometimes the vital fragments of reality - the truth we don’t like or the truth we don’t want to be the truth because the different narrative is more appealing to us. It is more enticing to consider that all of Andrew's wealth is a product of Helen’s wit, not his own, isn’t it? But as always, objective truth itself glides through our fingers.

In the end, we all like narratives that serve us psychological purposes even if that is one of those altruistic ones, being on the side of the disadvantaged and somewhat, oppressed.
In this kaleidoscopic exploration of narratives, Diaz prompts readers to ponder the acceptance of fiction and the ease with which certain narratives supersede others.
The plurality of perspectives emerges as a vital force, unveiling the intricate complexity of truth and challenging our propensity to discard narratives that diverge from our preconceived notions.

However, despite the brilliance of Diaz's conceptual framework, a lingering sense of unrealized potential permeates the novel for me. The author, like a literary chameleon, mimics diverse writing voices, replicating styles with varying degrees of success. The novel, no matter the interesting metaphysical ideas, at times feels like a literary exercise, a mosaic of styles awaiting the unearthing of Diaz's distinct narrative voice. He has yet to find his own reality and his own voice.
But considering the Pulitzer prize is already on his shelf at this stage of his writing, he does not need to sweat.
"Trust" stands as a testament to his literary prowess, an interesting exploration of narratives that transcend temporal boundaries, inviting readers into a realm where reality dances with the elusive delusions of powerful and rich, and disenfranchised.