I’m halfway through Lionel Asbo
In dusty Diston (also known as Diston Town or, more simply, Town), nothing— and no one—was over sixty years old. On an international chart for life expectancy , Diston would appear between Benin and Djibouti (fifty-four for men and fifty-seven for women). And that wasn’t all. On an international chart for fertility rates, Diston would appear between Malawi and Yemen (six children per couple —or per single mother). Thus the age structure in Diston was strangely shaped. But still: Town would not be thinning out.
Des is a 15-year-old being taken care of by his 21-year-old uncle:
[Lionel] was served his first Restraining Directive when he was three. Three years and two days: a national record … Lionel’s first Restraining Directive would have been called a BASBO, or Baby ASBO … ASBO, which (as all the kingdom now knew) stood for Anti-Social Behaviour Order.
During one of his periodic stays in prison, Lionel wins the lottery and becomes a rich celebrity. Des graduates from college and becomes a reporter, which does not endear him to Uncle Lionel:
“See, I’m a man in a predicament. I got this nephew. After his mum sadly died, I raised him meself. As best I could. Not a bad lad, I thought. Here and there he let me down. Loose tongue. Such is youth … Then what’s he do? Turns bent on me. Goes to the university, gets his head full of ideas. Studies uh, Criminology. And now he’s finking for a living …”
Lionel’s new wealth and fame gives him access to a broader class of female partners:
“DILFs, Des. All divorcees. The lot of them! You know how they do it? First they— first they get theyselves hitched to some old banker for ten minutes. Then they independent for life! And oh, they in gorgeous nick, Des. Superb. And I said to her, I said to this DILF, How old are you anyway? And guess what she said.” “What.”“Thirty-seven! Which means she’s probably forty-three! Think. She’s almost Gran’s age— and there’s not a mark on her. Pampered all they lives, they are. Beauty treatments . Massage. Yoga.”
Lionel settles on a celebrity/poetess named Threnody. A journalist comes over to do a profile on the couple:
“‘Pop the top off for us, love,’ murmurs Chris. ‘Threnody’ isn’t slow to oblige. And there are the famous boobs (first unveiled last year)— more like pottery than flesh, and pointing upward. “‘They weren’t cheap,’ says Asbo. ‘She told me what they cost. And that’s f*** all,’ he adds, ‘to what she’s blown on her a***.’
Lionel orders Champagne by the pint but has some trouble with a steamed lobster at a fancy restaurant:
then he went back inside to confront the scarlet fortress of the crustacean. … Bending low over the table, he positioned the jagged limb in the instrument’s clench; then he applied maximum force— and caught a jet of hot butter right in the eye! … The key moment came ten minutes later, when he threw down his weapons and reached for the enemy with his bare hands. “I’m sorry you seemed to have such trouble with your entrée, sir.” “… Well, you know how it is, Cuthbert. You win some, you lose some.” “Do take the napkin, sir. Take a clean one. Here … That looks really quite nasty. Might need a stitch or two.” … He swung himself down the steps and out into the alley, his tie half off, his jacket, shirt, and waistcoat colourfully impasted with butter and blood. He felt very hungry.
Amis is a great writer but I don’t think this book works as well on the page as it does being read by someone who can do the correct accents.
[I’m also in the middle of a book in print form: The Redistribution Recession: How Labor Market Distortions Contracted the Economy
Like Tom Wolfe, Amis can be a little bit over the top. No one (not even Brits) actually talks quite like that (maybe they THINK that way but people don’t speak their innermost thoughts) and in a fight between a dead lobster and a human, the human usually wins.
In any case, the best place to eat a lobster is at a picnic table by the water in Maine and it’s best to skip the suit and tie. If you are not up to fighting with the lobster, get a lobster roll but that’s a cowardly way out IMHO.
OT Again – Pao loses big time. Pao and the media are spinning it as a “victory for women” anyway. Huh?
Pao: ” If I’ve helped to level the playing field for women and minorities in venture capital, then the battle was worth it.”
Minorities? Was this even an issue in her case?
I’d say she’s made the situation for women in VC WORSE. Fail to hire a woman – risk a lawsuit once. Hire a woman – risk a lawsuit EVERY DAY while you hang on tenterhooks. Can I make this joke? Can I ask her to take notes at a meeting even if she is junior to me? Can I reciprocate a gift that she gives to me or will it be misinterpreted? Will everything I say to her or email to her be read to a jury someday and the meaning of my words twisted? Do I have to invite her to every possible event if even one other male employee is invited? Etc. Meanwhile, if you learn from Kleiner’s successful strategy, what you should be doing is giving all your female and minority employees extremely low marks on their annual performance reviews so that when they do sue you , you have plenty of ammo. Is making the workplace as adversarial as a divorce court really what we want in this country? Thanks for nothing, Ellen.
Casey Mulligan was arguing in November 2008 that a recession was unlikely. I think his models (“soup kitchens caused the Depression!“) are wrong.
Once you’re done with Mulligan’s book, I’d recommend Mian and Sufi’s House of Debt, which argues that the fall in spending was closely tied to high household debt. They show that spending on housing and durable goods started declining in 2006 and 2007, well before the banking crisis, and they use zipcode-level data to show that the most-indebted households cut back spending most sharply.
Russil: Thanks for that link. It does contain some good stuff: “saving America’s banks won’t save the economy.” I’m not sure we can hold it against Mulligan that he didn’t predict the depth or length of the recession. First, the big extensions in welfare programs hadn’t happened by November 2008. Second, and more importantly, anyone who can make those kinds of predictions can become infinitely wealthy through leveraged investing.
A friend of mine who runs a hedge fund said around the same time that stocks would keep falling because funds had to sell whatever could be sold. He predicted a bottom of about 6000 for the Dow (actual bottom was around 6500 in March 2009). My next Great Recession read is going to be Hidden in Plain Sight (Wallis). After that I could tackle House of Debt. I don’t know that deleveraging can explain so many years of anemic U.S. economic growth or the fall in workforce participation. If people had so much debt wouldn’t they be motivated to work?
” I don’t know that deleveraging can explain so many years of anemic U.S. economic growth or the fall in workforce participation. If people had so much debt wouldn’t they be motivated to work?”
Let me put forward an alternate hypothesis for your consideration: Maybe the problem wasn’t that people didn’t want to work (supply-side), maybe it was that indebted people didn’t want to spend money (demand-side), and with sales down, businesses had to lay people off.
Paul Krugman points out that if the problem was on the supply side (lack of motivated workers), we’d expect to see wage inflation as employers bid up the wages of the remaining motivated workers, which is not what the data shows.
This subject is of particular interest to me because the level of household debt in Canada is even higher than its peak in the US. If the hypothesis (that the problem is on the demand side) is correct, it’s quite possible that Canada is in for a world of pain: if our elevated house prices start dropping, and debtors cut back their household spending, the same thing could happen here. The Bank of Canada has been warning about the level of household debt for years now.