Blog
The Fear Index: Spoiler Alert
Written by Jimmy
OK, really it spoiled me, but in fairness to all of you if you’re reading the book, don’t read further.
I love Robert Harris books. But man did I hate this book. The most unsubtle thing I ever read.
-
- The first problem is his main character is supposed to be brilliant – but I figured out what was up in the plot about 10% the way in and it took him to 80% of the way in. I hate when you’re ahead of a smarter character. I met a good friend in Dubai airport who also read it and he’s smarter than me, but is dumber than the central character and he figured out the plot on page 2.
- But, the main problem is that Robert Harris is showing us how bad greed is, how bad hedge funds are, and trying to create this amazing story where the central metaphore for greed is computers take over the world with the sole goal to make money by exploiting human fear. But the fact is, the far more scary story about the financial crises is what really happened, and books like Michael Lewis’s the Big Short and Sorkin’s Too Big to Fail are far more scary than Harris’s book. We didn’t need him to show how scary the recession might have been if computer’s took over the world – having the humans in charge was far worse. Here’s Harris talking about it- I get the whole ‘fear of computers’ bit, but I still think the people are a lot more scarey.
- The Third problem, he then rubs our nose in his metaphor twelve ways to Sunday including having the wife dabbling in digital art involved her unborn baby. Lord! Stick to scary stories like the Nazi’s winning (Fatherland) and stay away from financial issues.
- And the fourth problem? It’s a bloody page turner and you can’t put it down but you hate yourself the whole way through.
Thank you. That’s a rant. Now, what I did find interesting in the whole background to the book was the May 6 Flash Crash, which I didn’t know anything about. Now I do. If you are interested, click here.
And What Does it have to do with music you ask? Well the obvious answer is we could talk about songs about business. And it turns out there is a whole blog on that: Top 10 Songs about Business. But that’s pretty obvious and in a blog slagging off a great author for being too obvious that would be at best ironic but you’d probably just find it an astonishingly good example of my profound lack of self-awareness. I could just say it is to point out songs about money, but that’s basically what the person did on the blog about business and then added ‘9 to 5’ by Dolly Parton, so we’re back to obvious.
No, really this is all about how the book makes you think of hedge funds robbery…. or hedge funds and a heist? Am I stretching? I don’t think so. And what do we think of when we think of Hedges and Heists? Stick with me… Of course, Ben Folds song the Heist for the Over the Hedge Soundtrack. …. hmmmmm ….. forgive me. Here it is: