Ten years of Rich and Poor

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Thinking about how my novel Rich and Poor came out in 2016, which is now ten years ago. (And, thanks to Luigi Mangione, it has even started selling again.)

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“I will kill him. It will solve nothing and help no one, but for me at least, it will bring something to an end. The poor must kill the rich, one at a time, at every opportunity. One man kills another and the message is clear, your wealth is cruel and unnatural. You can put fences, guards and dogs around your home, so you are like a prisoner in your own life, but if you are rich you will live in fear. You will fear your servants. You will look out the window of your limousine and, at every traffic light, wonder if each and every passerby has a gun and bullet with your name on it. It is only that the killing must be completely random. The victims having nothing in common other than their wealth, the killers nothing in common other than their poverty. The message should be clear: if you are rich you can be killed at any time. The police would arrest millions but there would always be another poor man that could suddenly snap. We would only have to kill ten to start, to strike fear in the hearts of every billionaire in the world. And he will be the first. I will see to it.

On a social level, people have to look after each other, but on an ethical level, each of us has to look after ourselves. If you are a billionaire it is because you have done evil in the world. You have exploited and caused untold misery. You have bent laws and governments to your will. I don’t want to shoot him. I want to strangle him with piano wire. I don’t want to escape. I want to be caught and explain my idea to the world. I want to be executed. I now have nothing to lose. We will all be forgotten. But if ten of us manage to kill billionaires those ten will be remembered forever. Our poverty will become history. Wealth is impersonal but we will make it personal again.”

– Jacob Wren, Rich and Poor



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just finished / just starting

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The perfect holiday gifts: Rich and Poor & Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim

Jacob Wren reads from his books

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Videos of me reading from and talking about my recent books:

Polyamorous Love Song Launch Reading
Polyamorous Love Song Interview
Rich and Poor Launch Reading
Rich and Poor Interview
Authenticity is a Feeling Launch Reading
Jacob Wren Introduces Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim


I recently posted on Instagram: "For the past few years I’ve been trying to figure out if there are ways for me to increase the readership of my books..." And one of the replies was: "I get it! What about videos? Your face talking to the camera? I can’t say what it would do for book sales, but you have a lot of followers already so reels could get good traction. When I go to your profile, I can see what kind of books you *read* but I don’t get a sense of what your books would be like or why I might need to get one. I think about this all the time for myself, so I’m just brainstorming out loud! Or pinning posts about your own books to the top row?" This is probably good advice regarding my use of Instagram. However, I would likely require technical assistance so instead I'm doing this. All of these videos, and much else, can also be found at: Jacob Wren Links



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Two short quotes from Rich and Poor

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“I start to think fear is the most furious part of courage. Knowing how full and real and justified your fears are but still not letting them stop you.”
- Jacob Wren, Rich and Poor (p. 144)


“I must experience everything that is about to happen to me as fully as possible, I must experience it as some kind of joy. I can’t just let it all speed by without living it fully. I can’t let this life or this struggle happen without me.”
- Jacob Wren, Rich and Poor (p. 176)


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Someone posted these two quotes on Goodreads and, even though I don't remember writing either of them, they struck me as things I was rather happy to have written.

Also, I suppose thanks to Luigi Mangione, more people seem to be reading my 2016 novel Rich and Poor. (It’s about a man who washes dishes for a living who decides to kill a billionaire as a political act.)

You can read my favourite review of Rich and Poor here.



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Luigi Mangione

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So many people have written to me to say that the Luigi Mangione story reminds them of my novel Rich and Poor. [Rich and Poor was also translated into French and published by Le Quartanier as Riches et pauvres.] The perfect gift for Xmas.

Years ago I also started writing a sequel to Rich and Poor but then gave up on the endeavour. If you’re curious you can find it here: Possible first chapter of the novel-in-progress One Yes & Many Know.

As well, so I don't need to do another post, Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim is a bestseller at Librairie Drawn & Quarterly.



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Riches et pauvres and La joie criminelle des pirates published by Le Quartanier

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Very excited that Riches et pauvres and La joie criminelle des pirates have been translated into French and published by Le Quartanier:

https://lequartanier.com/auteur/95-jacob-wren

The original English versions of these books are Rich and Poor and If our wealth is criminal then let’s live with the criminal joy of pirates.

A review in Le Devoir: https://www.ledevoir.com/lire/813123/critique-fiction-riches-pauvres-petite-entreprise

And a review in La Presse: https://www.lapresse.ca/arts/litterature/2024-06-01/lutte-epistolaire.php

Thank you to the translator Christophe Bernard and to everyone else at Le Quartanier.

Three Trilogies + One

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Unrehearsed Beauty (1998)
Families Are Formed Through Copulation (2007)
Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed (2010)

Polyamorous Love Song (2014)
Rich and Poor (2016)
Authenticity Is A Feeling (2018)

Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim (2024)
Desire Without Expectation (2027)
Faithful Unbeliever (2030)

Failure Finds its Happy End (2033)


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In my current in-progress trilogy (which I also seem to be calling my final trilogy): Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim (2024), Desire Without Expectation (2027) and Faithful Unbeliever (2030), all three books are based loosely around questions concerning the desire for utopia.

If I ever finish this final trilogy, Failure Finds its Happy End might be the plus one.

All of the published books have been, or are in the process of being, translated into French by Le Quartanier and Éditions Triptyque.

And if you're feeling extra-generous and want to help me continue writing books, you can find my Patreon here.



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Rich and Poor - The Single

Rich and Poor: The Single

Chaos & Star Records

Why Toronto publisher BookThug is getting into the record business in The Globe and Mail

Toronto publisher BookThug launches a record label in Now Magazine

And, of course, not to be forgotten: Rich and Poor: The Book




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J. C. Sutcliffe review of Rich and Poor in The Times Literary Supplement

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Jacob Wren explores the boundaries and overlap between art, politics and fiction in his writing and filmmaking. On his blog, “A Radical Cut in the Texture of Reality”, he returns repeatedly to ideas of activism and, in particular, ending, subverting or re­organizing capitalism. But Wren never fully inhabits a fixed ideology: wherever his work takes a position, it also questions that position.

Wren’s previous works include Polyamorous Love Song (2014), a multi-narrative novel about resistance and identity in both artistic and political movements, and the fragmentary Families Are Formed Through Copulation (2007), by turns paranoid and cynical. His new novel, Rich and Poor, is perhaps more accessible than his earlier fiction, being told through a straightforward alternating narrative, but is equally replete with ideas. As the title suggests, one narrative follows the story of a poor person, a former concert pianist and current restaurant dishwasher who decides to kill the CEO of a massive corporation; the other narrative is the perspective of this billionaire CEO. In the first half, the poor character fails to kill the CEO despite having got a job with his company for this precise purpose. In the second half, he tries a rather different approach.

There are subtle echoes of each story in the other – confirmations, elaborations and contradictions. Both extreme positions are tempered by each character having experienced the other’s situation to a degree, and by their ability to understand, although not agree with, the other’s position. The rich man is presented not as some kind of unknowable, sociopathic enemy but as someone who makes compromises and accommodations like everyone else:

You drive your car knowing it is disastrous for the environment, and yet continue to drive anyway... You think it is terrible but not so terrible you are ready to drop everything and take action. Myself, I would prefer to run my business without any recourse to violence, but also, I have to admit, I don’t feel so strongly about it. And if I were to do so, it would be impossible to remain competitive. Profits would suffer.

In Rich and Poor form and content are an intriguing blend. It might seem odd to praise a writer known for surrealism and experimental forms for creating complex, believable characters, but Wren’s ability to do this allows him more leeway with some slightly improbable plot twists and a formal style that packs in a great deal of political argument. This is writing that campaigns against complacency while avoiding self-righteousness. Like Wren’s other work, this book is essentially not so much a call to action as a call for the reader to step away from apathy and to take seriously, however briefly, the most radical of positions.




[You can also find the above review here.]



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Two end of year mentions for Rich and Poor

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"Jacob Wren’s Rich and Poor (BookThug) is political fiction at its sharpest. An aspiring concert pianist, reduced to working as an under-the-table dishwasher, becomes obsessed with taking violent revenge on the man he considers responsible for his plight: a billionaire oligarch who gets his kicks by, among other things, watching children fight.

Wren alternates in first-person between the two, effectively dramatizing the 99-per-cent vs. one-per-cent divide. In lesser hands it might have read as clumsy allegory, but because the two voices are equally compelling, what we get is something like an intellectual thriller.

Rich and Poor is essential and bracing reading, especially at a time when millions of poor Americans can convince themselves that a rich man is their champion."

- Ian McGillis, Madeleine Thien heads class of 2016, but don't stop reading there




"Wren’s novel opens with a poor man planning to kill a rich one, but, with a crisis at the halfway mark, things get messy and the greater violence, the brutality of the economic system, reveals itself. Rich and Poor reminds us that art can be resistance, and our love, revolutionary."

- Jade Colbert’s Favourite Canadian Small Press Books of 2016
 


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Finalist

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Rich and Poor was one of four finalists for the 2016 Quebec Writers’ Federation Paragraphe Huge MacLennan Prize for Fiction.

Facebook Event


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The Bookhug Interview with Jacob Wren, author of Rich and Poor

The Bookhug Interview with Jacob Wren, author of Rich and Poor



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Rich and Poor readings in Berlin and Cologne

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I will be reading from my new book Rich and Poor at these fine events:


Berlin:
Thursday, July 7 at 8pm
Hannah Black and Jacob Wren at Saint George's Bookshop 
Saint George's English Bookshop Berlin 
Wörther Str. 27 
Facebook event


Cologne:
Friday, July 15 at 8pm
Mark von Schlegell & Jacob Wren at "Schalten und Walten"
Schalten und Walten 
Sömmeringstr. 47a 
Facebook event



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"I’ve often wondered what it might be like to live in a world without money."

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"I’ve often wondered what it might be like to live in a world without money. How completely everything might or might not change. When I talk about a world without money people often tell me it’s something so completely impossible it might not even be worth broaching the topic. But money hasn’t always existed and I see no reason to be certain that it will always exist in the future. Without money I suspect many of the most extreme abuses of capitalism would be considerably more difficult to perpetrate. And yet money is so abstract, especially the billions that exist as little more than numbers on a computer screen. As Agamben has said: “God didn’t die, he was transformed into money.” But, I sometimes think: old gods are continuously being replaced with new ones. Rich and Poor isn’t a novel about a world without money, but when I follow its logic it might slowly begin to lead me in that direction."

- From: In Conversation: Jacob Wren discusses Rich and Poor
 


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work that dares to remind us

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"Rich and Poor is art in resistance, a work that dares to remind us of our capacity for revolutionary love..."

- Jade Colbert in The Globe and Mail
 


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Rich and Poor launches and events

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I will be presenting my new book Rich and Poor at these fine events:


April 16, Ottawa:
Ottawa Writers Festival
BookThug Spring Launch with Jacob Wren and Phil Hall
The Manx, 5pm
Facebook Event


April 18, New York:
Print Screen: Jacob Wren and Close-up
Walter Reade Theater / Lincoln Center, 7:30 pm


April 21, Toronto:
BookThug Spring 2016 Launch Party
The Garrison, 7 pm
Facbook Event


April 28, Montreal:
BookThug spring launch
w/ Joni Murphy, Malcolm Sutton, Stephen Thomas & Jacob Wren
Drawn & Quarterly Bookstore, 7 pm
Facebook Event


May 6, Toronto: 
Pages Unbound Festival
All Our Bad Ideas: Jacob Wren & Jordan Tannahill
Jackman Hall, 9 pm
Facebook Event 




Plus:
Rich and Poor Facebook Page
Order Rich and Poor



 
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Possible first chapter of the novel-in-progress The Biography

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I had just published a short novel about a man who washes dishes for a living who decides to kill a billionaire for political reasons when I received an email that I at first ignored. It was a strange email, seemed almost like a prank. “Dear Mr. Wren,” it began, “you don’t know me and there’s no reason you should.” This is actually where, at first, I stopped, writing it off as spam, or as a fan letter written in a particularly distasteful style. Either way it failed to maintain my interest even to the end of the first sentence and it wasn’t until several weeks later, scrolling through old emails, trying to decide which ones to delete, that I first read it through all the way to the end. “I have read your most recent novel with great interest. The main reason for my interest was personal, as is perhaps always the case with literature. One of your two main characters, since they are both unnamed I am unsure how to refer to them, bore a striking resemblance to my own history and character. I too began in relative poverty and have worked my way up to become one of the world’s richest men. I too see life through a complex web of cynicism and hope. There were moments, reading your book, when I wondered if I should in fact sue you for libel, moments too close for comfort, in which I was painfully aware of your characters shortcomings and therefore of my own. But instead of a lawsuit I have decided to come to you with a proposal. I would like you to write my biography. I suspect anyone able to write a fictional character so close to my own would also be able to capture my real self in all its complexity and nuance. From reading your work I of course realize that, politically, we are neither on the same page nor on the same side. However, as a struggling author I also assume you are very much in need of money, and that I would obviously be able to provide in substantial quantities. Let me be clear, I am not looking to pay you off, not bribing you in order for you to whitewash either my history or my character. I simply wish for you to write about me honestly, using your full abilities of both observation and research, including all of my shortcomings and flaws and bringing to bear upon them the full force of your literary craft. But perhaps I am getting ahead of myself. As a first step I simply propose that we meet in person. You can see for yourself, decide if I might be a worthy subject for your pen. There are many extremely boring books being written about CEO’s and business hero’s of our time. I very much hope you will understand my desire to have a more interesting, one might even say eccentric, book written about me. I kindly hope you will consider my proposal, at the very least the first step in which we meet in person. If your only temptation is monetary I will certainly not be offended. By this point in my life I’m used to it. Sincerely,” at this point I believe I should withhold his name, for fear of incurring an actual lawsuit at some future point in time. But I did, after reading over his email several times, trying to decide if it was for real, staring at page after page of google search results, all of which confirmed his enormous wealth, eventually reply to his email and agree to meet with him.

Our first meeting took place almost surreptitiously. It was only much later that I realized he had hired someone to watch me, learn my routines, and when he approached me in the bookstore it was the furthest thing from a coincidence, though he most likely already knew about my fondness for coincidences and that I would be taken in by the appearance of one, that I would want to believe it, believe it was a sign of some sort that I should write his biography after all. He said hello, said his name (though by this point I already recognized him), that we had already corresponded over email, that he was happy to meet me for the first time in person. What was strange was I immediately liked him. We had already arranged a meeting for later that week so our first encounter was brief. It’s only now I see how skillful this first chance encounter actually was. (What the hell would he have been doing in that low rent bookstore otherwise.) And also what it meant, how much he must have wanted me to do as he wished in order to go to all that effort. But even as I’m writing this I see it is incorrect. It had so little to do with me. He is simply a man who puts his mind to something and then does everything possible to get his way. In this way we are almost opposite, since so many of my desires and wishes over the years have almost completely eluded me.

Then there was our second meeting, a somewhat more substantial encounter. Very quickly I understood I was speaking to someone with certain skills, someone considerably more persuasive than I would ever be. He was talking, telling me about his life, and as he did so I could feel myself being persuaded that I should take him up on his offer, that working with or for him would make my life considerably more compelling. But what seemed strange to me in retrospect was, to the best of my recollection, I don’t believe he mentioned his offer once, or even alluded to it. (Except maybe at the very end in the form of a joke.) How did he do it, why was I persuaded? As I examined this question in my mind, turned it over and around, in fact spending the next several days wondering, I came to the conclusion that the right solution must be the most obvious one. It had to do with money. I thought, if you were to show me a nice looking watch, and give it to me, I would say thank you and wear it and be pleased with the situation. But if you were to show me a nice watch, tell me it was worth one million dollars, and then give it to me, against my better judgment, perhaps even against my most deeply held convictions, I would be overwhelmed. The man who wanted me to write his biography was just such a watch. He made a good impression, but the extra kick I got from him had almost nothing to do with whatever he may have done or said. The more I wondered about it the more I felt it came from somewhere else, from my own insecurities and doubts around the topic of money. From feeling that money is meant for other people, I want enough to get by but otherwise don’t really care for such things, and yet when I tell myself this supposed fact (about myself) in a more conscious way, the only place it leads me is to doubting whether or not it is actually true. I certainly have my own kind of ambition: ambition to write great literature and be recognized for it. How can I keep telling myself this ambition is so different from the ambition to accrue wealth? How is it so different from the man I met who so effortlessly persuaded me to write about his life? I thought the persuasion was little more than my unacknowledged desire to be close to money, to see a kind of wealth that honestly I can barely imagine – or, more accurately, my imagination runs wild, but I have no idea what it would be like in reality – and to witness it up close.

The end of this second meeting was particularly intriguing. Quite suddenly he changed his tone, in a sense changed his approach. He told me that when you have a lot of money you start to attract a different kind of person: brownnosers and sycophants, and he always worked hard to ensure there were enough people around him who knew how to say no, who knew how to stand up to him, to tell him when he was going off the rails and not just always what they thought he wanted to hear. He was sure I was this kind of person: stubborn, my own man, willing to speak ‘truth to power’ as an activist protesting against his corporation once described the true value of activism to him, and as he told me this, for the first time in our meeting, I doubted him, wondered if he was now simply telling me what he thought I wanted to hear. Sitting there across from him, what I actually felt is that I was just another potential sycophant in a coterie of the same. I knew that in my life, in so many positive but also self-destructive ways, I could certainly be stubborn, but I really wasn’t sure if standing up to the person who was paying my rent (and perhaps also my retirement fund) was one of those ways. At the same time, I told myself, if for whatever reason at any point the situation became intolerable, I could simply walk away. I would have the financial courage to walk away. Then he told a joke that seemed strange to me at the time, that I didn’t fully get, in fact I wasn’t even sure it was a joke. He said: “You and I are completely different people. We have completely different lives, different politics. But I always negotiate on the basis that everyone has something in common. And I’m certain we have a lot. That as you begin to work on the book you’ll really start to see it. And one thing I think maybe we have in common is this, you and I both: when we’re staring into the eyes of a pig, we really know how to grab it by the ears, we really know how to get our knee right in there, right between the eyes. You in your writing. And for me, of course, its just business.” Then he laughed, a genuine, hearty laugh, it was one of the few times I heard anything so joyful come out of his mouth, and, in one of the few moments in this story I’m genuinely ashamed of, I laughed along with him. I laughed as if he had just said the funniest thing in the world.

It will be no secret to anyone who knows me that my life is, in large part, a struggle with depression. However, it is often difficult for me to describe or explain the exact nature of my depression, what it is like for me. And what happened next was – instead of tearing into the large package of research material that appeared on my doorstep the next week, instead of reading the thirty-seven page contract that also arrived a few days later, instead of thinking about him or reconsidering whether or not I should actually write his biography – I instead fell into a deep depression and did absolutely nothing for several months. For this entire period the thick package remained unopened, propped up against the wall next to my front door. The contract remained unread.

Of course, I did not literally do nothing during this period. I was reading a great deal and continuing to half-heartedly work on the unfinished novel I had been chipping away at for several years. This novel was going to be different from any of my previous books. It was going to be more personal, closer to non-fiction, closer to my real daily life and thoughts. I wanted to write a book that went more in this direction, felt it was part of my natural progression and also part of the general zeitgeist, but at the same time within me there seemed to be an incredible resistance towards the undertaking. It was as if I wanted to write about my life without actually giving anything away. For example, I didn’t want to write about my romantic life, and when I did allude to it in certain passages, I would just as quickly edit those allusions away. Mostly what remained were my thoughts on philosophy, literature, activism and politics, and yet I refused to see it as a book length essay or collection of aphorisms, continued to think of it as a kind of autobiographical novel, and did everything in my power to continuously push the manuscript in this, perhaps unrealistic, direction. After the relative success of my last book, the book that had gotten me into this biography mess in the first place, I feared this new book of philosophical and political reflections would be seen by many as a disappointment. It had no characters (only me), no narrative energy or forward momentum. I realized I was up to my old tricks. My books had always alternated: a more accessible work followed by a more difficult or experimental one. I am never sure if this is a form of career self-sabotage or a way of keeping my artistic edge. But I know I can’t seem to help myself. I once thought of writing three unpublished books in a row: an accessible one, a more difficult one, and then another accessible one. This would make it possible for me to publish the two more accessible books back to back, allowing the second more accessible book to build on the first one’s success. But such nefarious long-term plans also seem beyond me. As soon as I finish an acceptable draft of a book I immediately want to get it off my desk, out into the world, out of my life, to be free of it. Keeping two unpublished books in a desk drawer while I attempted to complete a third would have required an act of pure will I was simply incapable of. It occurred to me that at the same time I was attempting to write a book about my own life, I was also going to begin writing a book about someone else’s. I wondered how these two books would bleed into each other, contaminate one another, how each book might make writing the other one easier or more difficult.

I said I did nothing during these three months, and felt I was doing nothing because the depression had once again overwhelmed me, but if I think back upon it there was actually so much that happened. One thing that happened is more and more unanswered messages accumulated, and were deleted, on my voicemail. These messages were from the potential publisher of the biography and became increasingly aggressive, even hostile, over the course of the three months. At first they were messages simply inquiring whether or not I had received the contract and whether the terms were acceptable to me. There were also emails. But as the months progressed the messages and emails wanted to know why they had not heard back from me, if I was planning to accept their extremely generous financial offer or if I was planning to continue ignoring them, if I wanted them to instead find another writer to complete this project or if, instead, it was my desire that this important book would not be published at all. I assumed, in the depth of my depression, that I would simply lose the gig, but as the messages grew angrier began to realize something else might be going on. That perhaps the subject of the biography had even insisted that the writer had to be me, and if this was the case it might be possible for me to demand even more money. Or was I only flattering myself.

During this time there were also difficulties in my romantic life that I was not able to write about in my non-fiction novel-in-progress and therefore will also not attempt to write about here.

One aspect of my ongoing depression is that it comes and goes, even though I don’t quite experience it in this manner. What I experience is that I am always depressed. It is only in retrospect that I am able to see that during certain periods I am slightly more functional and during others I am considerably less. Often, with these periods of more severe depression, there is something, some event, that snaps me out of it, and in this case it was a visit from my potential biography subject. I was sitting at the exact same café I go to each morning, a novel in my hands and a notebook open in front of me (years ago I had started writing longhand because spending too much time on the computer was hurting my back.) I was reading Volume One of The Aesthetics of Resistance by the German author Peter Weiss. There was a rap at the window and I looked over. I always prefer to sit as close to the window as possible, as if literally enacting my desire to be closer to the outside world. It was him, smiling at me like I was his favorite person in the world. He came and sat across from me. I was expecting him to be angry, but he didn’t seem even remotely upset.

“I was expecting you to say yes right away, which you haven’t,” he began, “but of course you also haven’t said no. You haven’t said anything. I’ve spent some time wondering how to interpret this rather ambiguous situation but haven’t come to any real conclusions. So I thought the best thing to do would be to ask.”

He was asking me a question, but I didn’t reply. And, in fact, I had no idea how to reply. In that moment it felt to me a bit like I was meeting the devil and he was asking me whether or not I was willing to sell my soul. I realized I hadn’t told anyone else about his offer, which suggested I felt shame, that I was ashamed to even be so fully considering it. Because I was definitely considering it, at the back of my mind where often it felt like I thought about almost nothing else. I considered all of this while an awkward silence settled deeply into the space between us.

“I don’t know,” I said, “your offer seems to have short circuited some part of my life. And left me paralyzed. I’m not sure I can write about you. I want the money but I’m not sure I can write about you. I just don’t know what it would mean.”

“That is a very honest answer,” he said, “that’s why I’m asking you. Because I believe you’d give me more honesty than some other writer. Of course I might be wrong about that. I don’t actually know you. Here’s what I propose. Why don’t you shadow me for a week. Get a sense of what my life is like. Find out whether or not a week in my life makes you feel like writing. We’ll of course pay you for the week. It could be a first step. Then at least you’d be basing your decision on something rather than nothing.” A week felt like a reasonable offer, and I definitely needed the money.

What was most unnerving about the week is that everywhere we went he introduced me as his biographer. And I didn’t correct him. In a way, he was only explaining why I was there. What other reason did I have to be there if I wasn’t going to write his biography? And because I was his “biographer” everyone we met treated me almost as if I was someone important. I carried a notebook and took as many notes as possible across the course of every day, not really because I wanted to get anything down, but because I wanted everyone to see I was taking notes. Sometimes I was tempted to write things like “this is so stupid” or “these people are all assholes” but I refrained, not because I didn’t agree with such sentiments, but because I was afraid of someone reading over my shoulder and catching me in the act. In actual fact, a week of his life didn’t provide so much to report. A lot of long tedious meetings, during which everyone went back and forth between normal speech and some sort of awkward business jargon I often didn’t fully understand. Dictating emails to a series of secretaries who could have easily written the emails themselves without the benefit of his tedious assistance. Some very expensive dinners during which everyone laughed at his jokes and were careful he always had more opportunities to hold the floor than anyone else at the table. A week of his life was like a string of living cliches, all of which he apparently enjoyed and enjoyed having me witness.

On the Thursday he asked me if I’d like to join him for a drink after work and I assumed this would be the meeting during which I had to give an answer. Was I going to write the book or not? But it wasn’t that kind of meeting at all. Instead, it was the meeting in which he told me he knew I was depressed, and he could relate, since he was also often sad. It was the meeting where he confessed that him and I weren’t so different after all. But I didn’t think depression was the thing that made us different. The thing that made us different was he was a capitalist and I was anti-capitalist. That I was completely against everything he stood for. That he was my enemy and, instead of sitting here drinking this very expensive scotch, listening to him talk about how sad he is while considering just how badly I need the money, and if I needed it enough to write this very questionable book he was proposing, I should instead write another book loudly calling for his death and the deaths of every one of his kind (since I’d already written at least one.) I realized he was still talking and I was barely even listening to him. Worried that I might miss something important, I made an effort to tune back in. But it was nothing so important, he was just explaining how he’d started poor, worked his way up from the bottom to where he was today. I of course didn’t believe him. If I were to write his biography maybe its main purpose should be to completely demolish this self-aggrandizing myth. To find the smoking gun, the irrefutable proof that he was born with far more privileges than he admits. Wasn’t meeting someone, gaining insights into their daily life, walking a mile in their shoes so to speak, supposed to grant you a little bit more empathy for them? Yet it was true I didn’t really dislike him personally. Spending time with him was more or less okay, if a little bit boring.

As we said our goodbyes, I mentioned I was going to rush to catch the last subway, and he insisted that his driver was already here, they’d drop me off, it wasn’t exactly on their way but they’d make the necessary detour. In the car, he finally asked me if I was going to do it. He couldn’t wait forever. It was a simple question requiring a simple yes or no answer. I hesitated, said I still have one more day of shadowing him and I’d decide by the end of the workday tomorrow. “You’re quite a strange person,” he said, “I knew that already when I read your book. I guess I want people to read about me through the lens of that strangeness. Which must mean I’m kind of a strange person as well. Don’t you think?”

I didn’t find him particularly strange, he was almost too normal for words. I guess this was yet another argument meant to persuade me to take the gig, and he really had no idea what kind of arguments might actually persuade me. But, then again, I didn’t really know either.

Our last day together began normally enough with a small, casual breakfast meeting with a handful of his top executives. It was actually the most relaxed I’d seen him, though later he told me it might have only seemed that way because he was a little hung over from the drinks we’d had the previous night. I hadn’t even noticed he was particularly drunk. Everyone around the table gave a short report on how things were going in their departments, but the reports seemed almost beside the point. It occurred to me for the first time that this entire week might have been a PR exercise staged for my benefit. Perhaps that’s why basically nothing had happened. I was really trying to pay attention, listen to what each executive was saying, but there didn’t seem to be any real content to it. All just variations on the same theme and the theme was: everything’s just going so damn well, we all just keep on making so much money. I wondered if anyone would have said anything differently if I weren’t here. If everyone around the table was simply auditioning for their small cameos in the biography I was allegedly going to write. And I also wondered if there was any way I could write about a scene like the one I was currently witnessing and make it seem interesting to a reader. In general, I’ve found the reader is only as interested as I am. And I was so uninterested I could barely stay awake. Then something almost interesting did occur. There had been a large oil spill a few years back and the negligence lawsuit against the company was about to go to trial. They of course wanted to settle out of court, but the plaintiffs wanted a full trial with all the damning evidence as fully on display as possible. The topic wasn’t so much whether they’d win or lose the lawsuit, or how much they’d have to pay if they did lose, but rather how much bad press they’d have to endure and what that might feel like. “It was the second biggest oil spill in recorded history, one of the executives said, and then everyone suddenly looked at me, to see if I was writing this down. I did not write it down, and satisfied that I wasn’t there only to rat them out, someone quickly changed the subject. But then, after the meeting, as we were walking down a long hallway back to his office, my potential biography subject said: “It's all right if you write about the oil spill. It’s a matter of public record anyways, so it would be conspicuous if you avoided the topic. And, also, I don’t want the book to be whitewashed, I definitely don’t want something over-sanitized, if I did I wouldn’t have asked you in the first place. You can’t make as much money as I’ve made without getting your hands dirty from time to time. And sometimes things do go wrong, that’s just a fact of life. But I believe, if you really get to know me, you’ll see I always work in ways that minimize the damage.” He clearly had a fantasy that I would write a biography in which he still came off looking relatively good. And, thinking about all of this later, I could begin to understand why. Because the fictional billionaire in the novel I wrote, the novel he read, was humanized. He was both an evil capitalist and an interesting, critical human being, with an almost Marxist perspective on his own capitalist role, which is another way of saying he was fictional. But I wasn’t going to take this billionaire asshole walking alongside me in the hallway of a building he basically owns and make him seem like a nice guy. There wasn’t enough money in the world to squeeze that out of me. Or was there?

Next, he said because this was my last day of shadowing him, we’d make an unexpected visit to one of their factories. We got in a car and the driver pulled away. Several times along the way my potential biography subject emphasized that they weren’t expecting us. I would get to see things as they were, not some sanitized play acting performed for my benefit. Each time he said this I wondered if they were actually expecting us and were now simply preparing to pretend like they weren’t. It was quite a long drive, out past the suburbs then through an industrial area that took us far past what I normally thought of as the outer boundaries of the city. Eventually our car pulled up in front of a building that, from the outside, looked exactly like my clichéd idea of what a factory might look like. When we walked in the front door it really did seem like they weren’t expecting us, and my first thought was that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. I had the strange feeling that most of the people here had never seen the big boss in person, and it was almost like a mean practical joke to spring himself on them like that. Everyone he spoke with interacted with him in a tone that suggested they might be fired at any moment. That he had shown up unexpectedly in order to fire everyone in some sort of mass layoff. I thought to myself that if he suddenly fired everyone it would make a really good scene in his biography, genuinely dramatic. Then I hated myself for having such an evil thought. People appeared to be hurrying in every direction to alert the others about our unexpected visit. It all gave me a bad feeling, as if we were cats and this was the kerfuffle of mice with nowhere to flee. My potential biography subject wanted to be given the grand tour immediately, but they insisted on a bit of time to prepare, so we were taken to a corner office, I assume what they felt to be the nicest office in the building, where I was introduced to a woman in business attire, who was also the first black person I’d been introduced to since the week began. I believe she was introduced as the foreman, but at the time I didn’t know enough about such titles, so I’m not entirely sure. There were a few rounds of small talk, which I made no mental note of, and then I was taken off guard when the foreman said: “After we unionize there will be some repercussions when you drop by unannounced like this.”

Without missing a beat my potential biography subject said: “I believe pushing through your union is not going to be as easy as you think.”

Just as quickly, the foreman replied: “I believe that stopping us isn’t going to be as easy as you think.”

The tone of this exchange is difficult for me to describe: cordial, almost sportsmanlike. It felt like they’d sparred like this before. And, at that moment, I wanted nothing more than for their union bid to be successful. That would really give me something to write about.

Someone knocks at the door to say that they’re ready for us, and we’re taken down a back staircase onto the factory floor. Everyone is standing by their machine, but all the machines are off, creating a kind of eerie silence, we’re told because it would be impossible to hear the explanations over the din of the machines. The explanations are very much by the book, as if we were a visiting group of schoolchildren being given the standard tour, this machine does one thing while another machine does another, everything must be done with absolute precision for the end product to be as reliable as necessary. I realize that no one explains just exactly what it is they make here, I guess because it is assumed that we all already know. But I don’t know, and the hyper-specific explanations provided by the tour guide don’t bring me any closer to that key piece of information. The workers, standing beside their machines, don’t make eye contact. I have to admit, the machines do appear to be state of the art, one step away from fully automated, so soon the workers might be superfluous as well. Our tour ends at a maquette of an offshore oil rig, and it takes me a long moment to realize that some prankster has added a giant oil spill to the diorama. They’d done a good job. The oil looked menacing and viscous, making the entire diorama look like a world gone wrong. Everyone else seemed to be noticing this at about the same rate.

When we got back outside, someone had spraypainted a message on the car. It read: “What will you tell your grandkids when they ask you: grandpa, why did you fuck up the planet?” The graffiti covered the hood and front windshield, making it impossible to drive away. We had to wait for another car. The driver apologized several times. He’d only left for a few minutes and when he returned it looked like this. There was some talk of calling the police, but my potential biography subject decided not to bother. He didn’t want to draw further attention to the situation, didn’t want even more photos of the graffiti going out onto the internet. Activists had been tailing him for a while now, so such incidents seemed like par for the course.

On the drive back he gave a speech that felt like he’d been rehearsing it in his head for a long time: “We’re not only an oil company. That’s a misunderstanding about who we are and what we do. We’re actually at the forefront of renewables. Our wind and solar divisions are the fastest growing aspects of our organization. When the time comes we’ll be part of the first big wave to phase out oil and implement the growing alternatives.”

I interrupted: “I have a feeling that might make people even more angry. You reap all the rewards of destroying the planet and then also want to reap the rewards for mitigating that destruction. As well, if you’re interested in reading the room, most people I know believe that by the time people like you decide ‘the time has come’ it will already be far too late.”

He looked at me for a long, dark moment. It was the first time I had openly disagreed with him since we’d first met. I must have been emboldened by the oil spill diorama and by the graffiti. I wondered if he was going to lash out at me, and there is a moment in which it seems he might, but he quickly calms himself down and, it seems to me, starts to reflect on what he should say next. He eventually decides on this: “I must be surrounded by too many yes men. Almost no one talks to me like that anymore. It doesn’t feel good, but it does feel interesting. Nonetheless, it makes me realize that maybe you really are the wrong person to write my biography. I need to be honest with myself. I don’t think I could handle reading that level of criticism about myself in a book, out there for all the world to see. It was an intriguing idea, but I see now that it’s the wrong way to go. Thank you for spending this week with me. It was instructive.”

I realized I had just lost the gig. I didn’t even know if I wanted it and yet, in that moment, losing it still stung. Actually, I think the only part that bothered me was the prospect of losing a big, fat paycheck. Some part of me had already started spending the money in my head. The potential biography subject, for this biography that was now never meant to be, looked out the window. Our car wasn’t moving at all. We were stuck in a deadlock of traffic. He asked the driver how far we were from the head office and it was only a fifteen minute walk. He took out his phone and called his security retinue, asked them to walk over and then walk us there. He said, almost to himself: “Maybe a short walk would do me good.” It was a beautiful day outside. Before now I hadn’t really noticed that he didn’t go anywhere without some sort of security. We waited in silence. There was some part of my brain that thought, if I played my cards right, there might be some way for me to get the gig back, and another part that thought that was the worst idea I’d ever had in my life. We were almost complete strangers, but in that moment we’d both managed to hurt the other one, though probably not so deeply. After fifteen minutes there was a tap on the window and we both got out of the car. There must have been an accident up ahead, because in those fifteen minutes traffic had barely moved at all. As we walked, it was educational for me to experience how the security agents kept their distance, giving us enough space to feel like normal civilians, yet remaining close enough to rapidly intervene in anything should happen. There weren’t so many people on the sidewalk, yet just enough for the security agents to at least partly blend into the crowd. We mostly walked in silence, though from time to time he’d make some polite, innocuous comment to which I didn’t reply. Now that I no longer felt this might be my big payday I no longer had the energy to be polite, at least not to this figure who represented everything I hated in the world.

What happened next happened so fast I’m not even sure I’m recounting the events in the correct order. A man in a mask stepped out of a corridor, walked up to the billionaire and shot him in the face. It happened so quickly I didn’t see if he was already holding the gun or if he pulled it out at the last minute. As he did so, the four security guards all ran toward us. The assassin was already fleeing, but one of the agents grabbed him and was about to pin him to the ground when another man, who appeared to be a random bystander, grabbed the agent and managed to pull him away just long enough for the assassin to get away. In all the chaos I didn’t see where he went and apparently, neither did any of the other three security guards. Already I heard police sirens, though perhaps that happened later. The billionaire was dead on the ground beside me. I stood there unsure what to do. I was taken to the police station for questioning, my phone and computer were confiscated, but I was released around seven a.m. the next morning with a warning not to leave town. I returned to my apartment still very much in shock. I had written a book about a person who wants to kill a billionaire, and then I had walked alongside a billionaire at the very moment he was killed. It was a coincidence that completely boggled the mind. However, in the novel I had written, the billionaire was not shot. He was strangled with a piano wire. And he survived.

The next day there was a picture on the front page of every newspaper. That picture has changed my life more than any other thing that has ever happened to me. Some very quick-on-the-draw bystander had managed to pull out their phone and snap a picture at the exact moment the billionaire was shot. The picture shows a masked man firing the gun and the billionaires head shattering, with me standing stock still beside him. However, it is really only the caption underneath the picture that triggered the coming, overwhelming changes in my life. Because the caption described me as ‘his biographer.” And there could be no book more in demand at that moment than a biography of that murdered man.

The days that followed were a blur of emails, phone calls and meetings. Every publisher and every agent was interested in a firsthand biography of this man whose assassination perhaps signaled the first volley in the coming revolution (though probably not.) The search for his assassin was of course equally voracious. A photo was circulating of the most likely suspect and the internet was utterly obsessed with it. The internet was considerably less obsessed with me, frequently wondering to what extent I was a traitor to the cause. To what extent I had betrayed all the values I had been associated with leading up to that strange reversal which had rapidly become my sole claim to fame. I did no issue a statement of any kind, wondering over and over again what I should do. Should I cash in and write some sort of biography? I would likely never have such an opportunity again. If I wrote it in a way that was effectively critical of capitalism and the oil industry, maybe it could be a kind of trojan horse, smuggling my ideas into the mainstream where they would be seen by far more people than had read any of my previous books. Or would they? Maybe people would see through this ruse and respond by not buying my book in the first place.


*


[This is an expanded version of my long ago attempt to write a sequel to Rich and Poor. A sequel that I previously left unfinished. However, I am now considering that I might some day finish it.]



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