That certainly includes women-the literature of wealth is bereft of women-and it’s clear to me that these are people who have been gagged. Fortunes are represented by a single person or family, but are were created by many people whose humanity has been erased. I was interested in the people who have benefited from great fortunes-I don’t say “those who have amassed great fortunes,” because that’s exactly what the book is questioning. How did you approach this?ĭIAZ: These big narratives are, by nature, impersonal. Wealth is obviously at the center of American culture, but it also feels taboo to address the actual appropriation of human labor that leads to capital accumulation.ĮSCALANTE: It’s very difficult to translate systemic issues into human stories. For Trust, I was interested in the role that wealth plays in the American national identity, this myth of the self-made man who pulls himself up by his bootstraps through hard labor and ingenuity. HERNAN DIAZ: As a voluntary American, I’m very interested in this nation’s ideas about itself. What draws you to these classically American periods? SHANTI ESCALANTE: Your first novel In the Distance was a Western, and Trust is set in 1920s New York.
Here, Diaz talks to Interview about Trust, the invisible labor that the American Dream is built on, and his 20-year-old fountain pen. In fact, Benjamin and Helen may not be their names at all. Depending on who is telling the story, Benjamin is either a taciturn genius or a blue-blooded sportsman, and Helen is either a self-made mathematician or a mad housewife. Trust, set in 1920s New York, is really a multi-narrative collection of four mini novels about an enigmatic, fantastically wealthy couple-Benjamin Rask, a stockbroker, and his wife Helen-that tackles subjects of class, empire, intimacy, and greed head on. The result of his efforts is Trust, the 49-year-old author’s latest work of historical fiction. Diaz, the Buenos Aires-born, Stockholm-raised author whose debut novel In the Distance- a story of immigrant triumph and family ties-made him a Pulitzer Prize finalist, is the rare author who would take on not just the issue of class, but a subject as abstract and systemic as the very way capital is accumulated, without sacrificing any drama or intrigue. Class may be a foundational component of any story, but for Hernan Diaz, it’s a fixation.
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