THE HUMAN COMEDY

The trick is not to be destroyed...

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Carlo is on an exotic holiday in Thailand with his mates, leaving me behind with Sophie, my new temporary assistant. Sitting in my kitchen, we’re attempting to prove we can survive without him, while he lounges on a decadent yacht in a turquoise sea, joining the super-rich -for the week.

Like most people, I’ve been at home watching the new series of The White Lotus, as well as Riviera - both of which focus on the extremely wealthy, about whom I’ve also been reading.

Last year, I enjoyed Gary Stevenson’s The Trading Game, an absorbing and gripping account of a young man’s life in finance in London, and the burnout and breakdown in Tokyo that follow. It will make an excellent film or TV show, with someone like a young Gary Oldman playing Stevenson in the lead.

I’ve just finished a similar tale - All That Glitters - by first-time author Orlando Whitfield, set in the art world. It’s a not unfamiliar account, beginning with optimistic progress into the devilish souls of the affluent, followed by a momentous crash and severe punishment. It’s also a love story between him and his best friend, the posh, handsome American boy, Inigo Philbrick.

Both lads start out as art world scamps, comically trying to extract Banksy graffiti from iron doors in the East End. It’s not long before Philbrick, who works for a while with White Cube’s Jay Joplin, develops into a fully corrupt scammer, collapsing further and further into crime, until he’s finally arrested by the FBI in Vanuatu and jailed.

For several years, Whitfield is Philbrick’s lapdog and follower, mesmerized by his older friend’s charm and ambition, though from where we’re looking, Philbrick doesn’t appear to have much of either. The stresses of trying to admire and sustain his friend, who is obviously weak and without any integrity, are too much. Whitfield ends up in rehab, having a full-blown breakdown.

To his credit, at least, Whitfield manages to detach himself from Philbrick, retreating into a necessary and painful disillusionment. Finally, to our relief, he realizes that this is a love that was no good for him - an addiction, rather than a passion - and as difficult to separate from as any other habit.

All That Glitters, along with The Trading Game, has a familiar story arc and is not unlike Netflix’s Apple Cider Vinegar and Becoming Anna. The attempt by envious young people - as con artists, cheats, and tricksters - to join the super-rich is as entertaining to witness as it must be painful to live.

According to this version of contemporary storytelling, billionaires have shitty, empty lives. This is always a consolation to hear, but probably untrue.

Like The Trading Game, All That Glitters provides insight into a world that I knew little about. Naively, I did at least believe that a foray into the art world would give us a glimpse into people who actually liked art and how it nourished their lives, just as my life has been enriched by the contemplation of a Cezanne, Van Gogh, or Rego. But there is no appreciation of art as statement or beauty. It’s all as transactional as Trump. In fact, the boxes which contain the paintings, as they’re moved from warehouse to warehouse, might just as well be empty, as indeed one is when Inigo Philbrick is dancing his terrible and precarious cons.

Both Gary Stevenson and Orlando Whitfield are really good writers with crazy stories to tell about their adventures. But these can only be cautionary tales: the people they find themselves among are terrible and will eat you alive if you try to join them without coming from a similar background.

Both Gary Stevenson and Orlando Whitfield are very smart people who attempted to do something that is essentially stupid. Both remind me of young male characters from Balzac’s great La Comédie Humaine, and even from Stendhal’s The Red and the Black: undervalued kids coming to the city and attempting to make it big—using their talent and sexuality to climb socially and accrue wealth and status.

As I read these books, I couldn't help but think how lucky the authors were to be in a position to tell such juicy tales, capturing a historical moment of profound inequality. But I wouldn’t want to have suffered as much as they clearly did. Their stories are dramatic because it was always touch-and-go whether they would survive. But to their credit, they did get out and were redeemed—particularly Gary Stevenson, who now makes fascinating videos about the current economic situation.

Strangely enough, these two memoirs are what one might reluctantly call ‘uplifting’. Both Stevenson and Whitfield do, in the end - after passing through some bumpy disenchantment - find something meaningful in their lives. We see them realizing how they want to live and what their values are. It wouldn’t be odd to understand that this can take some time, with many mistakes and dead ends along the way. The trick is not to be destroyed before you know where your desire truly lies.