When fiction tries to change the facts on the ground
s+b Blogs
Friday, the Thirteenth, a classic 1907 novel by the muckraker and stock manipulator Thomas Lawson, reminds us that telling stories can weaponize resentment.
Illustration by Sandema / Alamy
The great French novelist Gustave Flaubert offered some famous advice to writers: “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
Thomas Lawson evidently never got the memo. For a brief period, around the turn of the 20th century, he was one of the most controversial stockbrokers and muckrakers in America, publicizing Wall Street finagling even as he was participating in it. Lawson was one more thing as well: a novelist. His 1907 Wall Street melodrama