Hernan Diaz is at his home in Brooklyn, sitting in front of his laptop and tilting the screen to allow for the obligatory background required of all writers when interviewed—especially those recently nominated for a major literary prize.
“Excuse the cliché,” he says. “The writer in front of his bookshelf. I know I know! But, look, this is the only enlarged room in my apartment, so…”
It’s an impressive bookshelf, of course, every spine of every book – and almost all of them are hardback – looking so antiquated you can practically smell their dust. Diaz’s day job is in academia, so if you peruse his shelves for the latest Lee Child, you’ll be doing it for nothing.
If Diaz seems extremely happy right now – and he is – then it’s for good reason: his second novel, trust, has just been longlisted for the Booker Prize. “I couldn’t be happier,” he says. “I had no idea about that! I mean, I knew the book was delivered, but when the news came, a total surprise! It feels good to be on such a diverse list. I am excited!”
trust is an intriguing novel – a book about money that is not dry and stuffy, but rather has a vibrant, contradictory life. It tells the story of a New York tycoon named Benjamin Rask and his ailing wife Helen, but does so through four different writings.
It opens with a novel loosely based on Rask’s life, which, we later discover, was a bestseller in the 40s, but which Rask himself hated so much that he tried to destroy the writer’s career.
A truncated memoir by Rask himself follows, essentially to set the record straight, but the memoir never goes beyond the first draft because Rask can’t be bothered. Then there’s another memoir, this one by Rask’s former secretary, who had been accused of ghosting Rask’s failed autobiography; she did not, it seems, enjoy the experience. Finally, there is the diary of Rask’s wife, Helen, whose role in her husband’s success has always been sloppily overlooked simply because she was a woman.
It’s no small thing that Diaz has managed to make a book about the business of making money so readable. Despite a proliferation of information on how investments work, trust is a literary page turner.
The writer, who was born in Argentina but raised in Sweden, says: “The thing that has always been so fascinating to me about America is how money, wealth and capital have always had a central place within the American imagination. Money is how this country perceives itself, and the American dream has always been, at its core, about the accumulation of capital.
During his early research, he found that there had been plenty of—invariably dry—non-fiction on the subject, but that fiction had rarely ventured into the territory. For the aspiring novelist, then, this felt like a cracked door waiting to be opened.
“The absence felt like an omission,” he says, “and it was an omission I wanted to address. I wanted to write fiction about making money, but I also wanted to write about the presence of women in this process. Whenever I read anything about capital accumulation, it always focused on a self-made man. I couldn’t help but wonder: where were the women in all of this?”
For a newcomer, Hernan Diaz is no stranger to accolades. His first novel, 2018 In distance, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the most prestigious literary award in the US. Her subsequent success brought her out of the library and into the limelight.
“Most of my day jobs have been at different universities and always as an academic,” says the 49-year-old, who is associate director of the Hispanic Institute for Latin American and Iberian Cultures at Columbia University. “In my current position, I edit an academic journal and I love it. I always knew this was what I wanted to do with my life and it’s an honor to do it. I’ve always wanted to write too, of course,” he adds. “Writing feels like something I had to do, a request.”
More from BOOKS
Why? He smiles. “Well, it’s not about any kind of anxiety, or any kind of metaphysical imperative. I just like to inhabit the language, to be inside it. There is nothing like that; nothing else gives me such pleasure. “The place I always want to be,” he says with a sigh that’s as sincere as it is dramatic, “is within the English language.”
As a young man, Diaz lived for a time in London before settling in Brooklyn with his wife and child. It took him years, he says, to write a manuscript worth publishing. When it finally did, a veil was suddenly lifted.
“The success of my first book was very joyful for me,” he says enthusiastically, “because I used to be very lonely. I had no writer friends and so it felt like I was working in a vacuum, without a sense of belonging, a sense of community. But now I’ve made so many writer friends and for me that’s incredible. The dialogue I have with them is so fulfilling, so warm, and has changed my life in a very direct and tangible way. They’re so smart, these new friends of mine, such great conversationalists, and I think that’s the best thing, really.”
He will learn if trust was shortlisted for the Booker on 6 September. Between now and then, the plan is to read the entire long list, not just so he can gauge the competition, but to enjoy the richness of their individual stories.
“I’m not going to lie,” he says. “If my book was shortlisted, it would be exciting. I would be thrilled.”
It’s at this point in the conversation that our Zoom connection freezes, leaving Diaz’s face static on the screen. He is caught in the middle of a smile, the sun shining from his teeth, radiant.
Trust is published by Picador at £16.99
What I am reading now
Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
I love her stuff and have always wanted to read this but never got around to it before. That’s wonderful.
What am I reading next?
Love goes to buildings on fire by Will Hermes
It’s about New York City in the 1970s, which is a period I’m very interested in.
