Dark Horses

ONE OF THE SMASH successes of recent popular fiction was Paul E. Erdman’s The Crash of ’79, originally published by Simon and Schuster and now available in paperback from Pocket Books ($2.50). The novel is a working-out of paranoid fantasies about the flooding of Western financial institutions with Arab petro-dollars; the collapse of our tottering banking system when the Arabs decide to withdraw their deposits; and a nuclear shoot-out —involving Iran and Saudi Arabia— for supremacy in the Persian Gulf and, inferentially, in the world.

What has made this yarn so interesting to so many people is the fact that it is woven from elements in contemporary life that are quite real, though veiled in mystery that lends itself to lurid fantasizing. The critical concentration of arms and oil in the Middle East is perfectly authentic. So is the influx of Arab oil money into American banks and other business institutions. And so is the vulnerability of our banking system to sudden massive shifts of wealth. Erdman simply put the ingredients together in racy prose.

MS

About the Author

M. Stanton Evans

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ONE OF THE SMASH successes of recent popular fiction was Paul E. Erdman’s The Crash of ’79, originally published by Simon and Schuster and now available in paperback from Pocket Books ($2.50). The novel is a working-out of paranoid fantasies about the flooding of Western financial institutions with Arab petro-dollars; the collapse of our tottering banking system when the Arabs decide to withdraw their deposits; and a nuclear shoot-out —involving Iran and Saudi Arabia— for supremacy in the Persian Gulf and, inferentially, in the world.

What has made this yarn so interesting to so many people is the fact that it is woven from elements in contemporary life that are quite real, though veiled in mystery that lends itself to lurid fantasizing. The critical concentration of arms and oil in the Middle East is perfectly authentic. So is the influx of Arab oil money into American banks and other business institutions. And so is the vulnerability of our banking system to sudden massive shifts of wealth. Erdman simply put the ingredients together in racy prose.