Confessions of a Taoist on Wall Street, by David Payne (Houghton Mifflin, 735 pp., $17.95)
My opinion of this novel “closed mixed,” as they say on Wall Street. Tao and Dow: 735 long pages written to elaborate that single pun. When first I understood what David Payne had in mind—no less than a transpacific bridge, Chinese mysticism and American finance interlacing—I got all carbonated up. This is the sort of imaginative reach you hope for from fiction: beats another egg coddler about lawn care and infidelity in Westport. And there did appear to be an intriguing parallel—the bull and bear, for one, are critical in Taoist symbology. Sun I, Payne’s young firstperson protagonist (half Chinese, half American, orphan son to a rich American ex-Flying Tiger), seemed some sort of wonderful genetic oxymoron. This would be like having your Merrill Lynch broker say, “It is the emptiness that will make the cup useful.” Moreover, Payne’s first segment—set in a Szechwan Taoist monastery—felt brilliant, real as Greek fire. By page four hundred I suspected it felt brilliant, real because I don’t know diddly-whip about Taoism or Szechwan.
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