Horst-Maxine-Windust

Mark Kohut markekohut at yahoo.com
Sun Feb 23 12:18:49 CST 2014


Yes, Horst makes money.....a 'wonderful' quality in all of TRP's fiction....one of his deep authorial thematic identifications. THIS IS SARCASM. 
 
Rich Horst cheated on Maxine. Rich Horst seems to have left Maxine with little (but the 'house") as they say.
 
Horst can seem to sense where the money will be....like Jay Gould? Or a Vibe?
 
Watching bad TV is TRP's way of saying he is his culture, mindless, with an "inhuman"---[in the sense his skill
happens without much interaction with human beings...he doesn't make anything, create anything--even a 'team"]
skill for getting rich. He is the 1%, with an overt "niceness"---why shouldn't he be? He is Wall Street. 



On Sunday, February 23, 2014 12:44 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
  
He is a very sympathetic character in BE.  He seems almost pure hearted.  He watches bad TV, but makes tons of dough. What reader wouldn't want to be in his shoes? Would that we could be so lucky.

On Saturday, February 22, 2014, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:

What? Don't like Horst? Why? He has money? He trades commodities? Nothing wrong with his job, right? He's an independent craftsman.  He's good. Real good. Nothing wrong with that. What? He seems like a good guy. There is that temper. That's not good. He gets violent with Maxine. But other than that, the novel pits him against the computer and the new kids on the block, and he gains our approval. Right. 
>
>On Saturday, February 22, 2014, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>Wrong.
>>
>>Sent from my iPhone
>>
>>On Feb 22, 2014, at 9:53 AM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Horst does not adopt the new technologies that have all but buggy-whipped the traders in Chicago and in NYC by the time he moves to NYC.  He takes a sublet in the tower not because he has finally given in to computer trading but because he wants to keep at his old craft trade as long as possible. He is, as he says, a dinosaur. As he says, the computer trading has taken over and he can do his job anywhere now, but he wants to trade the old way. Though the trading pits in the building of Lower Manhattan are on the lover floors, Horst takes a sublet at the top. These floors have been relegated to the old world traders, guys and gals who trade bonds and act as dealers for UST Securities, so Cantor Fitzgerald the Firm hardest hit on September the 11th. The novel clearly sides with Horst and his craft. His magic, his luck and fortune, not unlike the author's own, is set against, not entangled in the computer traded world that allies itself with the
 neo-liberalism of Windust.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> 
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