Due to my Sharpe fixation in August, I now have only four weeks to read the entirety of David Copperfield before we meet up for book club. From “I am born” through “A last retrospect” is 715 pages in my Barnes & Noble Classics edition. Turns out, though, this is a perfect time for Dickens’s classic, according to two of the folks interviewed for a Washington Post business story by Frank Ahrens this weekend:
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By Frank Ahrens, Washington Post Staff Writer, Sunday, August 31, 2008; F01
“… We asked a number of smart people — inside and outside economics and finance — to scan their bookshelves for answers. Though there is no single book that can sum up and explain the current conditions, we asked each of our contributors for one book they would recommend to their neighbor, their daughter, their aunt, their barber, priest, rabbi or best friend to help them gain some perspective on these volatile times…
NELL MINOW, Editor, the Corporate Library, provider of corporate governance research and analysis
“David Copperfield,” by Charles Dickens (1850)
What it’s about: An impoverished ragamuffin becomes a successful novelist.
Minow says:“I don’t want to inflict on nonbusiness readers a book with graphs, equations or acronyms. And everything you need to know to understand finance and economics you can get from ‘David Copperfield’ while you are enjoying the story and the language.
”Just think of that unctuous Uriah Heep oozing his odious way into control of the law office of hapless Mr. Wickfield by pretending to be humble and helpful. He’s kind of like the people who changed the name of ‘high risk’ mortgages to ’subprime.’ Think of David himself, so captivated by the easy charm of his school friend Steerforth that he never expects his devastating betrayal. Steerforth, who never cared about the damage he inflicted on others, is a lot like the ultra-smooth Wall Street guys who chopped up the subprime loans into little pieces and assured buyers they were a good investment while they took their payment off the top.
”And think most of all of Mr. Micawber and his advice to David: ‘Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.’ Following that advice will protect you from the worst of economic upheavals.”
HENRY LOUIS “SKIP” GATES JR., Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University, author and co-founder of TheRoot.com, owned by The Washington Post Co.
“David Copperfield,” by Charles Dickens (1850)
Gates says:“This quote [the Mr. Micawber quote referred to by Nell Minow] should be nailed above the door of the Oval Office and the doors leading to both chambers of [Congress].”
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