Book Talk: Peter Mountford Discusses his Novel, Strong-Willed Ladies, and Hollywood Endings

The explosive local talent who brought us A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism is swinging by Third Place Books tonight on his whirlwind of a book tour. And though we did previously discuss his debut novel here, we’re excited to offer up a little more insight from the man himself—you know you’ve all been just a little curious about what the hell a hedge fund even is…and how exactly does one get involved in such a strange and lucrative career path? Today Peter Mountford sheds a little light on this (and other aspects of his novel)—and if you still feel at all in the dark, just drop by Third Place Books this evening for more money talk. Here’s just a little Seattlest convo with Peter to warm you up…

Can you tell me about your own experience with a hedge fund?

Well, it was a very strange experience, mainly because I didn’t even know that I was involved in a hedge fund. After college, I spent a couple years working for this shady right-wing think tank as one of their token liberals. I made eight bucks an hour, but thanks to some vigorous title-inflation I was referred to as an “adjunct fellow” on my later bylines. My previous job had been flipping burgers. Thanks to the title, my work ended up in Christian Science Monitor and other lofty venues that would have ignored me if they’d known I was a twenty-two year-old fry cook. I knew a very pretty girl in Ecuador and wanted to get back in touch with her, so I took the job to Quito and wrote for the think tank about Ecuador’s ailing economy for a year-plus. After that I quit.
I hadn’t been home long when, reading some articles about Ecuador one day I noticed the think tank had published one of my pieces. The byline indicated that I was a “senior associate of EMG.” I had never heard of EMG, so I looked it up, and learned that it was a financial consulting firm, which operated a dubious-sounding hedge fund, and they had the same mailing address as that ostensibly non-profit think tank.
So I never exactly worked for a hedge fund. I’ve known quite a few people who have, though, and I find that community endlessly interesting. It’s a bizarre society, so wealthy and so powerful, but also very insular and the people who pull the levers are all these math-heads, very nerdy people.

Are there any similarities between Gabriel's stories and your own? Also, did that story about the miner's bones landing in someone else's face, like shrapnel, actually happen to someone?

Yes, there are certainly similarities between Gabriel and myself, and between our stories. In the first chapter he’s trying to hunt down this classified document in Bolivia, and I had an almost identical experience searching for the same type of document in Ecuador. There are other things I pulled from my life, like the way he fell in love with Bolivia in his early twenties and then found himself unable to re-access that emotion after returning to the country—I had an analogous experience in Ecuador.
That dynamite thing, yes, has happened. Bolivian miners do throw dynamite as part of their protests. Protestors also use a lot of bottle-rockets. So, all day in La Paz you here this incessant “Pop! Pop! Pop!”—some are close, some far away—and then you’ll hear this deep and thunderous “KABOOM!!!” and the windows shake. That was dynamite.

The female characters are confusing and complex in this novel (and mostly really frustrating)--why are the women such a strange presence in Gabriel's life?

The book is full of these domineering female characters, who emerged unconsciously, at first—it was not something I did on purpose. Dr. Freud would, I’m sure, want to have talk to me about that, but it’s true. There’s his mother, who’s a strong-willed professor of anthropology, a well-known liberal voice in international affairs, the kind of person who you hear on NPR periodically. And then there’s his friend and sometimes sex-buddy, Fiona, who’s a senior reporter for the Wall Street Journal, and his boss, Priya, who’s a fund manager at a well-known hedge fund. And, finally, of course, his girlfriend, Lenka, who is the press liaison for Evo Morales. So, they’re all very different people, but they do tend to be complex and strong-willed, and they’re often frustrated by Gabriel.
Gabriel is assailed with uncertainty about the shape his identity should take, because he’s young in that particular way, and as a result he’s always under the sway of one or another of these women. He looks to them for cues, for affection, for lashings, and they either give him or don’t give him what he seeks, because they’re very different people. Ultimately, it’s a surprisingly matriarchal novel, especially given the title. The men, young and not, are not as accomplished or self-possessed, by and large, as the women.

Do you think that the conclusion of the novel where Gabriel has transformed into this lonely yet successful business man is almost an inevitable way to conclude the novel? Why did you chose this route instead of having Gabriel escape from the hedge fund world?

Well, the standard Hollywood ending for a Faust-story is where the person sees the error of his ways and begs forgiveness and—cue violins—rejects (or even boldly betrays—cue thunderous drums) the incredibly lucrative career he’s been given for the love and respect of his new girlfriend. In my experience, that’s not quite how the world works. Gabriel, you know, he more or less starts off the book incapable of doing the very exciting, if morally dubious, job that he’s just been hired for. With this job, he gets to travel the world in style and write little reports about what he finds, and for the effort he makes hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, at minimum. It’s very stressful to him that he’s not very good at this job, and he’s afraid it’ll mean that he’ll be fired. But by the end, he’s figured out how to do the job well, probably too well.
Initially, I’d assumed it’d be the other end, the one where he sees the light, but then I tried to picture myself in Gabriel’s position at his age. He’s got this amazing opportunity, if he can hold onto the job for a few years, he could probably retire early and do whatever he wants with the rest of his life. You know, I tried to imagine myself when I was in my mid-twenties, living alone in New York and working some incredible boring job at AOL, and what if I had been handed the opportunity to do Gabriel’s job?
Would I sacrifice the opportunity because it seemed ethically dubious, and hurry eagerly back to my mountains of debt and my squalid apartment? I wish I could say that I was that noble a person.

What is the next project you're working on?

I’ve just started a novel that’s set in Sri Lanka at the climax of their civil war, in 2009. I’m in the most fun part of the writing, the very exploratory phase, all paper and pen. It should be quite an exciting book once it’s done, but that might not be for a couple years.

Peter Mountford will be at Lake Forest Park Third Place Books tonight at 6:30 p.m.