Review: Fear and Loathing without the Hallucinations
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 29, 2013
A spineless-liberal premise guides this well-written, amusingly heartfelt, in-your-face portrayal of scruples, or more appropriately to the tone of the book, the lack of them in the banking world. “Banksters” spills over the reader with rabid renderings (love the alliteration...ha, ha!) of people behaving like sniveling rats, smelly toadies, greasy sharks and slimy lizards. Guess what? They are all out to get each other. Burlesque at its best personifies the largest and the smallest of vanities found in the executive offices of the places where ‘shit sandwiches’, or bad financial products, make their way to unsuspecting clients.A well-researched element of this book falls into the category of passing difficult to understand financial information to the reader in canapé size bites in the form of bursts of delectable dialogue. Compared to some other of the author’s great books, Banksters succeeds at letting the characters deliver the message not the narrative. As a result, the book goes down easier. This guy makes stereotypical sketches or normally wooden Indian characters come to life.The only quibble I might have with the book relates to the subject matter having been beaten over the head by so many stories that it risks being redundant, but that is a purely personal reaction. The book speaks to the Hunter Thompson fan in me and the snappy dialogue would once again(as Wilson’s other work would) shine on the silver screen. Bravo for being less heavy handed with the anti-capitalist, agitprop message mongering.I sat down on a Sunday afternoon and couldn’t put the book down. What more can a reader ask for!