The Contrarians: A Novel
By Gary Sernovitz
(Henry Holt & Co., 2002 — 290 pages, $25.00)
Reviewed by Ina R. Bort
From the New York Law Journal
March 12, 2003
How long does it take, when you're meeting someone for the first time, until they ask you: "What do you do for a living?" And how long does it take before you ask them the same? One minute? Two?
In The Contrarians, a compelling and original novel, Gary Sernovitz explores the disturbing toll on a person's psyche that answering that question — honestly, anyway — can take.
Sernovitz, who once made his living as an analyst at Goldman Sachs and now does so as a writer (this is his second novel), tells the tale of Christopher Kelch, a seemingly nice midwestern boy who has, within the first six years of his career, skyrocketed to the highest echelons of the financial services industry.
When we first meet him, Kelch is riding high. He's ranked number 5 in the industry, and raking in a hefty salary as a Vice President of the immeasurably prestigious investment firm, Freshler Field. During his several moments of free time over the past year, Kelch has also managed to acquire a good sized apartment uptown, and an attractive, innocuous doormat/girlfriend, who never makes a peep about his insanely long hours, his last-minute cancellations of their plans, or the fact that he appears to have no interests beyond mastering the game of picking the best stocks for his institutional clients. (Presumably these character flaws are easier to overlook when your loved one is netting nearly half a million a year.)
Not even thirty years old, Kelch has already traveled solar systems away from his extremely humble (i.e., borderline welfare) beginnings in America's heartland. His pride in what he does and the ceaseless demands of that work have, so far, insulated Kelch from the evils of self-reflection. Not for a moment does he stop to consider why he spends nearly every waking hour compiling and analyzing bits of information in order to make the most accurate investment recommendations, or whether his six-digit salary is justified, or how life could possibly hold more meaning beyond the four walls of his super hi-tech office at Freshler Field.
All that changes when Kelch meets Paul Galicia, a friend of his girlfriend's, at a group dinner one night on the Lower East Side. Galicia, a hip, witty, freelance journalist, with clunky black-framed glasses and long sideburns, finds the tightly-buttoned Kelch, donning an impeccable Brooks Brothers uniform, irresistible. Galicia asks Kelch to submit to an interview for an undefined personal project on which Galicia claims to be working. Kelch, for reasons he does not understand, agrees, and the two meet some time thereafter in an East Village bar.
The segments that comprise the interview, and Kelch's responses — both those uttered aloud to his interrogator and muttered to himself — to Galicia's obnoxious, relentless questions are the best-written sections of The Contrarians. Sernovitz artfully and convincingly describes the gradual stripping away of Kelch's armor — and shows how Galicia, by insisting that Kelch simply explain to him exactly what it is that Kelch does, what purpose he serves, as an equity researcher for Freshler Field, slowly dismantles Kelch's persona as a smug, invulnerable young man and unearths the hysterical, insecure wreck that lurks beneath.
Kelch, perhaps like anyone else, fares badly when forced, by Galicia, to articulate in so many words why his work contributes anything of value whatsoever to the world. Galicia hammers away, over and over again: "Why do you do what you do?" "What exactly do you do on a day-to-day basis?" .... "You must do something to earn your millions." "You keep on talking research, research, research. But what is 'research'? Are you sitting in a library with back issues of Business Week?"
In a snappy interior monologue of Kelch's, Sernovitz brilliantly captures just how maddening questions like Galicia's are, and the perverse priority system of our society that they reflect: "What do you do? Huh? What do you do? What do I do? Yes, what do you do? Well, I breathe I eat I drink I dream I sleep I see I pee I poo I screw I do I do. No, no, what do you do? Your job. That was the first and only question they asked in the full intermission, in all New York, the only remnant of any toddler's curiosity inside the city's adult-children, their eyes all wrapped in the same gauze of ambition. And if that was the only question, than that was the only subject. No one asked Mary if she was patriotic. No one asked Jack if he was a heretic, no one asked Sam if he had a loving heart. What do you do? Huh? Whatdoyoudo? That was all they needed to know, for that was the existential truth."
Nor will Galicia let Kelch hide behind the usual platitudes and jargon. He just doesn't buy Kelch's assertion of having "always [been] fascinated by the markets." As the interview continues, it becomes increasingly clear that Kelch doesn't believe any of this either. Galicia's insistent questions force Kelch to listen to himself for the first time, and to confront the truth about his job and, in turn, himself: all has been a sham.
For, in a world like Kelch's — like ours, that is, where everyone is called upon to identify himself or herself by what one "does," what does it mean when what one in fact does — for $500,000 a year — is disseminate lies?
Driven to the end of his rope, Kelch gives Galicia more than he could have ever asked for by revealing what "equity research" is really all about at Freshler Field, and on Wall Street in general — a truth that, thanks to the efforts of Eliot Spitzer, has recently been revealed to the public at large: "'Listen up and listen good: we all compromise our integrity every day by conducting so-called independent research on companies that are banking clients of Freshler Field . . . As you know, I'm the one who has to talk to investing clients about a Freshler IPO. So how could I tell the full truth about an IPO to my clients if it's bad?'"
It's up to you to find out how Kelch comes to terms with his revelations to Galicia and to himself, not to mention with the damning article that Galicia ends up publishing as a result of the interview - an article that escapes no one's attention at Freshler Field. While Sernovitz's writing loses some steam in the denouement, The Contrarians is a worthwhile and thought provoking exercise for us all. Ask yourself: "What do you do?" And see how you like the answer.
