The Long View

One of early twentieth-century America’s literary critiques of capitalism (hard to believe nowadays, isn’t it, that serious authors and readers might critique our economic system), Frank Norris’s The Octopus, has as its ironic tag line, “whatever the traffic will bear.”

The invisible hand of the market, we are told with mind-numbing repetition and diminishing credibility, makes rational decisions about value.

Maybe.

Consider a recent print advert from Bauman Rare Books, which features these valuations of twentieth-century rare editions:

$3800-An American Life, by Ronald Reagan (1st ed, inscribed by the author)

$3600-Collected Poems, by Robert Frost (limited 1st ed, signed by the author)

$3500-Capitalism, by Ayn Rand (limited 1st ed, signed by the author)

So an autographed book by one of the more significant American poets of the century barely trumps a signed screed by a mind-numbing polemicist and turgic prose writer, and is trumped by the vapid narrative of a vacuous ex-president?