But in a sense, can you understand that?ĭIAZ: I can understand that, and I tried to be very sympathetic to this character. SIMON: Bevel is not flattered to see his life become the stuff of fiction and a novel written by a man named Harold Vanner any more than William Randolph Hearst liked 'Citizen Kane'. The idea was to present a novel within the novel, a historical document, a memoir and a personal journal, and recruit the reader as a textual detective of sorts, have them ask themselves how reality itself may be the effect of a textual construction, may be the effect of different narratives. SIMON: What do the four narratives help us see that, let's say, the omniscient voice that includes four viewpoints wouldn't?ĭIAZ: Well, the novel is concerned, to a large extent, with the distinction between history and fiction.

Thank you so much for being with us.ĭIAZ: Thank you for having me - an enormous pleasure. And if money is the God among commodities, this - with my upturned palm, I drew an arc that encompassed the office and suggested the building beyond it is its high temple. It's the universal commodity by which we measure all other commodities. HERNAN DIAZ: (Reading) Why work at a place that makes one thing when I could work at a company that makes all things? Because that's what money is - all things. Let's ask the novelist to read from the secretary's memoir when she applies for her job. But what is money, really? 'Trust' is a book spun from four narratives - a novel wrought from the tale of the life of Andrew Bevel, a financial baron during the 1929 stock market crash, then his attempt to write his own story, then his secretary's memoir, and finally, the journal left by his deceased wife, Mildred. Why are we so confident it can buy a cup of coffee and a muffin? Because it has a story - a narrative, you might say - that money can buy what we need and perhaps what we want and eventually what we may dream about.

Hernan Diaz's new novel 'Trust' may move you to look differently at, say, a $5 bill.

Trust by diaz