"The Privileges"

Reading "The Privileges" (Random House, 2010), by Jonathan Dee, made me feel a little soiled, a little sad, and a little mad. Dee portrays amoral, materialistic, unlikeable characters: Adam, a financier (doing something obscure, complicated, secret, and illegal with hedge funds, insider trading, and the like), his wife Cynthia, their children, and their friends. The fact that the couple eventually become philanthropists doesn't erase their essential negative characteristics: from the opening scenes before, during, and after their wedding, they think of themselves as special, invincible, and above the normal rules. I know that Dee is giving us insight into a very wealthy stratum of American families, and a substratum of those families who achieve their wealth through Wall Street misdeeds; I know too that, as Tom Perotta's back cover blurb says, the novel is "an indictment of an entire social class and historical moment, while also providing a window onto some recent, and peculiarly American, forms of decadence." It is of course good to reveal and critique these dangerous and selfish excesses, and the topic is certainly timely, given our current economic situation and the role of Wall Street in bringing us to this destructive place. But the book itself is disturbing. The sense of entitlement shown by the characters is astonishing. At one point Adam, in a rare moment of introspection, justifies his illegal practices to himself, thinking "he had done what he'd had to do...to get them all...to that place of limitlessness that she [his wife] so deserved and that he had always had faith they would occupy" (p. 170). I am actually very interested in the topic of privilege; I have addressed the subject myself in my academic writing. I admit that I started reading "The Privileges" partly because of the topic, and partly because I have a predilection for novels taking place in the affluent sections of Manhattan -- a sort of guilty pleasure. I must admit that the novel is well written. But still, I had a visceral negative reaction to it, and I can't recommend it to others.