Toe in the water

I've been working on my book on literature and high-end inequality - entitled ENVIERS, RENTIERS, AND ARRIVISTES: WHAT LITERATURE CAN TELL US ABOUT HIGH-END INEQUALITY - for close to two years now.  But I have not as yet presented any of my chapters on particular literary works before any live (or, for that matter, dead) audience.

I have been able to get feedback from a handful of readers.  Also, just over a year ago I informally discussed my introductory chapter in-house at an NYU Law School summer faculty workshop.  Plus, at a couple of conferences I've discussed chapter 2, "The Mapmaker's Dilemma in Evaluating High-End Inequality," which is more of a traditional-style policy article for me.

But the literature chapters are quite different from anything I've written before, and also are less obviously suited to being presented at the typical faculty workshops and conferences where I am most commonly to be found.

Two weeks from today (Monday, Sept. 12), I will be presenting one of the literature chapters for the first time, albeit not in an open-to-the-public format - rather, at NYU Law School's internal faculty workshop.  Since I would guess that more of the faculty is interested in Jane Austen than in tax policy, I figured that this was a good setting at which to present my Jane Austen chapter.

Anyone who would be interested in my presenting this or any other of my literary chapters should certainly let me know.  As I imagine they say at car dealerships, all reasonable offers will be considered.  Plus, I generally like to travel when my schedule permits.  (I'm pretty heavily booked up through the end of November 2016, but have greater flexibility after that.)

Here is the book's outline as it currently stands.  I have written chapters 1-7 and made good progress on chapter 8 (although forced for now to set it aside, what with the approaching semester).

PART 1: WHY THE SUPER-RICH, AND WHY LITERATURE?

1. Introduction

2. The Mapmaker’s Dilemma in Evaluating High-End Inequality

PART 2: ENGLAND AND FRANCE DURING THE AGE OF REVOLUTION

3. Why Aren’t Things Better Than This? Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

4. A Rising Tide Rocks All Boats: The Threat of Rising Prosperity in Stendhal’s Le Rouge et le Noir

5. The Arriviste as Morally Compromised Cat’s Paw: Balzac’s Le Père Goriot and La Maison Nucingen

PART 3: ENGLAND FROM THE MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY THROUGH THE START OF WORLD WAR I

6.  Art, Heart, and “Schmart” in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol

7.  Not To Blame? Plutocrats, Capitalism, and Foreigners in Anthony Trollope’s The Way We Live Now

8.  Disconnected: Rentier Intellectuals in E.M. Forster’s Howards End

PART 4: AMERICA: LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY THROUGH WORLD WAR I

(9) Horatio Alger’s Ragged Dick

(10) Theodore Dreiser’s The Financier and/or The Titan

(11) Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth

PART 5: BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS

(12) F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

(13) P.G. Wodehouse 3-pack: Thank You, Jeeves, Right Ho Jeeves, and Code of the Woosters

(14) Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited

PART 6: THE MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY

[3 works TBD.  Definitely Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead.  Maybe Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman?  Sloan Wilson’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit?

PART 7: THE MODERN ERA

 (18) Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities

(19) Martin Scorsese, The Wolf of Wall Street (2013 film)

One additional work?

PART 8: CONCLUSION