Earlier this week I read a story about a downfall. A life of opulence, of parties and travel and celebrity, of striving and success, that appeared to look so very grand until the creditors knocked, unmasking what was, in the end, nothing but a fraud. The news began with a description of the wealth, with the veneer that this family exhibited to the world, before it described the bad investments, poor decisions, and leveraged assets. So: goodbye to the beachfront home, to the private planes, even to the Manhattan party invitations, and hello to the slobbering, eager attorneys.
Even though there’s nothing particularly unusual about this most recent story of swindlers, I find its regularity, its almost archetypical presence in my daily news, what’s actually notable. To my eye these tales—which start with ambition, lead to power, result in exposure, and conclude with a swift descent—satisfy the voyeur’s most prurient desires. For the reader there’s a rush of pleasing, smug sensations, from the beginning to the end, from seeing the extravagance to seeing it snatched away, which shapes this myth into such a timeless tale. Whether it is a Ponzi scheme in high finance or a forged signature in a suburban boardroom, the finale is the same, with the plot differences basically superficial when compared to the emotional similarities. In an editor’s dream, this latest story of aspiration and wealth and recklessness also happens to end in a death.
But I remain less interested in this particular story than in the eternal interest in these stories. Uncovering someone who has cheated is always a rich tale for gossip. And the tale only grows in importance if the cheater has reached the supposed pinnacle of society. When the vacation homes and exotic trips mask a pernicious undertone. For many people, there’s satisfaction in exposing, in particular, cons among the wealthy, in uncovering the fraud and cheating and poison at the heights of power. There’s comfort, it seems, in these stories, as the alternative—the notion of sincere, ethical striving among the wealthy—is too troubling to contemplate for the reader who struggles to pay the bills.
Notice how these tales bring a cascade of sensations. Almost always, they begin with desire, with flowery descriptions of glamour, there are descriptions of the exotic locations, the styles, a detailing of the cost and size of homes—facts that might be delicious but are in fact incidental to the crime. Notice the next time a senator or executive or actor is arrested. There will be a crime, sure, but there will also be receipts: lists of major purchases, a tally of monthly expenses, an accounting of the extravagance. Don a black robe and judge these malcontents, says the storyteller, but enjoy this tour of luxury while you listen to the charges. Relish the weekends spent along the ocean, note the names of the celebrities who attended the parties, appreciate the list of brands that comprise the wardrobe. Perhaps while you read you might even imagine living with such style and leisure and indifference to expense. You’re even free to appreciate the ambition. All the striving, the striving for acceptance, for acquisition, with just a hint that there’s at least a bit of cleverness underneath the mask of the monster.
Once the story begins to become distasteful—once it reaches the point of broken contracts, broken promises, broken relationships—you’re free to savor the popping of a delusion. Lift your chin above your nose and peer down at the guilty, in those timeless and most satisfying of human sensations: disdain, condescension, contempt. Now that the news has enticed you with luxury, in the particulars of a seven course meal prepared just before the arrest, wallow in a pleasurable feeling of revulsion: here are a few defrauded pensioners, here is the orphanage after the embezzlement, here are the children who have lost their homes.
The death in this particular news story gives the ending an extra punch of pity, which is an unexpected if not unprecedented touch. The typical alternative, such as a long jail sentence, isn’t pleasing for readers who insist on a conclusion. Hollywood isn’t the only place where writers must provide the public what it demands. Which means that the voyeurs get to indulge in the entire ride, a little envy in the beginning, a bit of glamour at the peak, some disapproval at the deceit, and, eventually, a sense of justice at the demise.
Yet I wouldn’t express surprise at these reactions. This is, after all, one of our oldest tales. It is rooted in our history, we feel its visceral pull: Icarus flies too close to the sun because of ambition, King Midas wants a golden touch and ends up with a curse, Macbeth’s drive for power initiates his fall. For American literature, The Great Gatsby encapsulates this classic journey. Nick Carraway begins with an account of Gatsby’s parties, with a precise description of the luxury and grandiosity, listing the amount of bottles consumed each night and giving pages of aristocratic surnames and telling us how long it takes for the servants to clean in the mornings; then, after bathing the reader in lavishness, he reveals how it is all a fraud, that there’s something untoward at the root of Gatsby’s wealth, confirming the reader’s suspicions about the link between wealth and crime; until, finally, he ensures that you overlook your earlier enjoyment of the luxurious parties in the first part of the novel, and he lets you feel satisfied in the downfall. And if there hadn’t been a crime in Gatsby’s rise, Fitzgerald’s novel would have a hole. To imagine the shifty and secretive and mostly taciturn Gatsby as the possessor of an honest and noble fortune is to imagine an incomplete novel.
If you believe that you’re missing something vital—attractiveness, wealth, companionship—learning that the attractive are cruel, that wealth comes from fraud, that those with partners suffer, offers, to those who lack, the sensation of an exhale. It comes with a feeling of righteousness. It makes what you lack appear superficial, unnecessary, or fraudulent. To contemplate the alternative, to imagine that the attractive are kind and sincere and happy, that the wealthy are benevolent, or that those in relationships feel grand, is a thought that you might want to avoid. It is, instead, easier to degrade the ideal than to confront your inability to reach the ideal. And this emotional cascade is rather handy if you’re writing a story about a downfall.
Of course calling this petty is an understatement. It is unhealthy, unjust, and, most especially, sad. Living vicariously through public gossip is a typical habit, although it is probably not the best method of getting your daily serving of glamour and contempt. Unfortunately, there’s no straightforward solution if you want to tell these tales. The difficulty is similar for those who write films about the mafia—which are terrorist organizations that murder, enslave, and corrupt. How do you capture viewer interest while also revealing what’s underneath the tinsel? What’s the worthwhile story that isn’t simply a superficial tale of opulence? Can you avoid creating a mafia film that’s just a preening, stylish tale about a lifestyle? I loathe didactic storytelling—where there’s a purpose, a message, that supersedes the story—so that’s not a solution. But you probably want to avoid the commonplace route, the route that most news stories about fraud present: a tale of woe, shame, horror, evil, which is structured for your vicarious pleasure.
I enjoyed this and would love a writing experiment where you wrote about one of these rise and downfall events! Or someone with your thoughtfulness, curiosity, and depth / could upend the genre altogether, a brand new gatsby
I remember the old TV show with Robin Leach about the rich and famous. Regular folks enjoy viewing the opulence, but also take solace in seeing the fall of the rich and shameless. My experience is that there are good folks and bad in every socioeconomic level. But like crabs in a pot, if one almost succeeds in climbing in, we seem to delight in dragging it back in with the rest of us.