“If you’re so smart, how come you’re not rich?” are the first words you read in Jeffrey Eugenides’s short-story “Great Experiment.” (I know, I know, blogs are supposed to report on breaking news and things of the moment, and here I am, providing a link to an ancient New Yorker published on March 31. But I’ve been busy. This week is the busiest of all, my days a swirl of student conferences and readings of paper drafts. Before falling asleep last night, I wanted time for myself and I picked up that old issue from the top of the dresser. I take up the old, and present it to you as new. A postmodern gesture.) Such intelligence in the story. And the sense of things gone wrong and the desire to set them right again. The enormous futility, and yet, the quick frisson of the con job, or of change. A story very much worth staying up for.

“O.K., forget Jimmy for a minute,” Piasecki said. “I’m just saying, look at this country. Bush–Clinton–Bush–maybe Clinton. That’s not a democracy, O.K.? That’s a dynastic monarchy. What are people like us supposed to do? What would be so bad if we just skimmed a little cream off the top? Just a little skimming. I’m telling you I think about it sometimes. I fucking hate my life. Do I think about it? Yeah. I’m already convicted. They convicted all of us and took away our livelihood, whether we were honest or not. So I’m thinking, if I’m guilty already, then who gives a shit?”

When Kendall was drunk, when he was in odd surroundings like the Coq d’Or, when someone’s misery was on display in front of him, in moments like this, Kendall still felt like a poet. He could feel the words rumbling somewhere in the back of his mind, as though he still had the diligence to write them down. He took in the bruise-colored bags under Piasecki’s eyes, the addict-like clenching of his jaw muscles, his bad suit, his corn-silk hair, and the blue Tour de France sunglasses pushed up on his head.

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