Bank
Page 26
BANK
a novel by
david bledin
Reading Group Guide
i-BANKed
FROM CUBICLE DRUDGERY TO LITERARY ENDEAVOR
The story of Bank’s genesis has a fitting analogy in the song “One Little Goat.” This crowd-pleaser, sung at the end of a Passover Seder, is about a kid that gets eaten by a cat that gets bitten by a dog that gets hit by a stick that gets burned by fire that gets doused by water that gets drunk by an ox that gets slaughtered by a butcher who gets killed by the Angel of Death, etc., etc. “One Little Goat” is an illustration of cause and effect, proving that if you hang around baby goats too much, the Angel of Death is really going to stick it to you (be warned, you Amish types!). Likewise, Bank came into being through a random chain of cause and effect, beginning with a mass e-mail I sent out after six months of working at an investment bank.
It was supposed to be a cathartic experience, a chance to rant and rave and explain to my friends and family why I had seemingly disappeared off the face of the planet. The e-mail was given the brilliantly original subject header “A Day in the Life of an Investment Banker,” and it was that, more or less:
11:25 a.m. Starbucks.
12:30 p.m. Finish binding 60 pitch books.
12:45 p.m. The Defeated One is skimming through the Daily M&A Activity Update. It’s from the IT guy; he amalgamates all the porn blocked by the servers and sends it out to the junior employees. The Defeated One has just enough time to close a picture of two midgets doing disproportionate acrobatics with a pylon before Utterly Incompetent Assistant comes by, asking if she can help with the binding. There are two very obvious towers of pitch books beside me.
1:20 p.m. Sycophant wants two sections of the books reversed.
1:25 p.m. Utterly Incompetent Assistant gone to read the latest Shopaholic novel on her two-hour lunch break. Unbind the 60 pitch books.
1:45 p.m. Rebind the 60 pitch books.
Despite these modest intentions, sending out the e-mail triggered its own sequence of events: my friends forwarding it to their friends; the e-mail getting into the hands of Samantha Grice, a reporter at the National Post, who thought it would be interesting to turn it into an article on white-collar sweatshop labor; the article being published on the front page of the Arts section of that paper (including a caricature of my stick-out ears); the online version of the article being linked to by blogs around the world, aboriginal tribesmen clicking and clacking about a young i-banker’s all-nighters; this click-clack chatter eventually reaching the ears of Matt McGowan at the Frances Goldin Literary Agency, who posed it to me this way:
“Dave, I can’t promise you anything, and it’s going to be tons of work, but hey, it could be fun to turn this e-mail of yours into a novel.”
Considering that choosing a career based on actually getting paid hadn’t accomplished much more than a sterile apartment, a sore wrist, and expensive dinners to stall the slow but certain death of all happiness in my life, I couldn’t see the harm in putting some pro bono effort into Matt’s suggestion. Plus, I had just decided to quit banking and pursue a second bout of cubicles in a less time-consuming position as an economic consultant.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned through all of this, it’s that you’ve got to be crazy to write a book. It’s true: Something about you just can’t be quite right. Otherwise, why would someone spend limitless hours typing away, grappling with syntax, fleshing out the inner psyche of Postal Boy, all for a sliver of possibility that he’d eventually get published?
But the reward, the sweet, sweet reward: finding that final resting place for your book. Seeing your name above an elegant image of an upturned finger. Knowing that your late-night typing is going to piss off a hell of a lot of people, people who you want to be pissed off. Forget Confucius: Vengeance is a wonderful thing.
Questions for Discussion—and Activities— Guaranteed to Result in the Disbanding of Your Reading Group
1.Discuss your childhood dreams and aspirations. The rest of the group should then discuss how your current career path ensures that these dreams will never, ever, be realized.
2.In Bank, Postal Boy has a nervous breakdown. Have you ever had a nervous breakdown? If so, were you put on medication? Distribute any antipsychotics you might have. Remember, sharing is caring.
3.At one point, Mumbles finds himself in the compromising position of having his fingers tangled in the panties of a colleague’s wife. Have you ever had an affair with someone at work? Did you get an STD as a result? (This one works best if there are couples in your reading group.)
4.As bad as things get, some folks always have it worse. Select the group member whose job is so awful that you would never consider it, not even if threatened with weird Chinese torture involving stalks of bamboo and live rats.
5.Let’s face it: the longer you spend in a cube, the flabbier your ass gets. Identify the group members who have put on the most pounds since college and make them finish off the bowl of Cheetos while somebody tickles their belly rolls.
6.Mumbles feels physically inadequate when he compares himself to the Prodigal Son. Divide into groups of two and determine the superiority or inferiority of each other’s body parts.
7.Investment banking is an industry in which importance is directly correlated with how much money one makes. Group members should write their salaries on strips of paper and toss them into a hat. The group should then try to match each salary with each participant. The person with the highest perceived salary must go on a beer run; the person with the lowest perceived salary should be left to grapple with his or her own inner shame.