Raeden Zen's Blog, page 523
July 28, 2012
WALL STREET meets ANIMAL HOUSE??
Review of Flexon Vale via Amazon.com:
This is an unconventional and one could argue creative novel by an author who is attempting to stake out new literary territory. The presentation is somewhat Faulkneresque as the story is told from the point of view of 2 friends (Chason Vale and Julian Flexon). The narrative is curious in that it stretches in time mostly from the late 1990s to 2025-2030. There are flashes of what goes on in different time segments between past & future, but the bulk of the action takes place within those two timeframes.
The main character is a Gordon Gekko type of a fellow (Chason Vale). He is smug and not always altogether likeable ~ and not just because of his greed. His “angle” is that he gets his mistress, Felicia, to sleep with CEO types so he can get the goods on insider trading deals. Of course, he is married, so he has a tough time separating business from his personal life.
I will admit that some of the dissertations in the book that dwelled on economic theory and the vicissitudes of the stock market made my eyes glaze over. The lengthy explanations did render an authenticity to the book (for, after all, Vale is supposed to be an economic Richard Feynman) but it’s not the type of thing I’m used to reading. People who are heavy investors & have a great interest in Wall Street will likely enjoy these sections far more than myself.
The other major influence on Vale’s life, aside from investments, is his alma mater. It’s a fictional school called Zeno State. The milieu of the campus life as well as a great many incidents in the book bear a striking resemblance to the recent goings-on at Pennsylvania State University.
One of the most interesting aspects of the book is that it takes some nascent present day technologies & describes them as they become fully functional in the future. The most salient of these would be robotic drivers; as I’m writing this review they’re actually testing them on the highways in Nevada.
As I indicated in my title line, this book ultimately struck me as something of a cross between Wall Street and National Lampoon’s Animal House (Full Screen Double Secret Probation Edition). It seamlessly goes from party-hardy football tailgaiting & frat house bonanzas to the high risk / high reward world of high-roller investments. If that sounds like story that’s worth exploring, then this book is for you!
July 27, 2012
July 26, 2012
Are you kidding me?
Via Richard Obert @azc_obert, Twitter:
BREAKING: Centennial 2012 LB Brennan Franklin commits to Penn State. “It’s still Linebacker U. Every linebacker wants to go there,” he said.
RZ: Penn State is still Penn State, and Ron Vanderlinden is still coaching the linebackers. And needless to say, we can use all the help we can get. And we’re going to recover. We’re going to make this right. I don’t know how. How do you repair kids’ lives that were ruined? Can’t really do that. But, we can do our best to help as many as we can going forward, starting with Jerry Sandusky’s victims. I hope the school will give them whatever they want.
As for the alumni like me, we should all donate to charities that help victims of child abuse, rather than donating to the school. PSU has a $2 billion endowment; it’s going to be fine. Let’s donate to the kids instead.
Wild, Wacky, Smart, Penetrating, Terrifying Satire About Where We Are
Review of Flexon Vale, via Amazon.com and http://www.literaryaficionado.com/:
Raeden Zen: where did he come from, is that his real name of a moniker, where has he been and how did he demystify the raucous mess in which the globe finds itself at present? Read FLEXON VALE and travel from the 1990s to the 2030s in an at once intensely confusing (trying to keep the characters straight and the time zones intact in your head), while simultaneously engrossing satire along the order of Jonathan Swift of the changes that crept into our way of life in the last century and the results of those changes on the way we are struggling through today.
FLEXON VALE is not an easy read - nor does Zen seem to want it to be easy. He seems to take a stab about glorification of instant gratification in swallowing a novel in an evening without investing a lot of thought (`just some entertainment’) and that is one reason why it is so satisfying to make it through his novel. He takes us through the college days of Flex and Vale as they and their camaraderie plow through the sling and arrows of hormonal advances, heavy drinking, drugs at Zeno State, a college with a famous football team headed by a man who is discovered to be a child molester (yes, the parody of Penn State is intentional), and how the entry into the dot com boom rose and blossomed into the US becoming an Empire at the mercy of banks, the ups and downs of the economic crises both now (predictable then) and in the future - and the story at his point is in the characters of money magician power broker Chase Vale and his `partner `, real estate broker Felicia Sandorf and on and on.
The power of this debut novel comes not only from the complete ease in which Raeden Zen explains financial concepts but in the way that he weaves them into some hefty philosophical moments, in the middle of all the hilarious disasters that surround his characters. `I came to the realization that there is a human element to the market, which a textbook can never explain. That’s why the market is not efficient. That’s why there are profits to be made (or lost). It’s so simple a concept yet is repeatedly misunderstood by some very intelligent people. It was also the reason for my losses; I was to blame, not the market……I was not in college to learn how to be a bean counter, I was there to learn how to think. In a world where events are so influenced by human emotion it is important to be able to form an opinion and take action, right or wrong then learn form your own mistakes so that you can avoid them in the future. Furthermore, if I absolutely hated a career path, I would at least be capable of learning a new role in the business world. Or become and entrepreneur.’
FLEXON VALE looks at the world and combines a healthy dose of hindsight with a courageous dollop of futuristic predictions and comes up with a novel that touches on all the idiosyncrasies (computers, social networking, wonderfully absurd mechanisms for spying on each other and the fate of the world, decaying morality, obsession with chemicals and environment without acting on information, etc) we are living, holds up an intelligence mirror and says `I told you so’ with a tremendous wit and sarcasm and incidental gift for erotic imagery. This may not be an easy book to read (if you are truly paying attention to it) but it has those elements of predictions that make us pause, think, re-evaluate and maybe even adapt. And that is the sign of a good writer. Grady Harp, July 12
