Where did the idea for Wall Street Noir come from?
The idea for Wall Street Noir grew out of a view I’ve long held—based on nearly twenty years of working there—that Wall Street is actually quite a noir-ish place, a social crucible that is much more Jim Thompson than Warren Buffet. This runs contrary to many popular notions, I know, and to the public image—of a well-scrubbed, rational, even glamorous place—that the Street likes to project, but when you consider the big money, dysfunctional egos, cutthroat competition, class struggle, desperation, and sweaty paranoia that wash around there, it’s less of a stretch. My desire with this anthology was to collect stories that in one way or another illuminated the dark end of the Street. I was looking not so much for tales of glitz, glamour and masters of the universe as I was stories about desperate measures in pursuit of that glitz, or the corrosive, distorting effects of proximity to so much excess, or self-deception, or the people who get ground up in the well-oiled gears, or deals with t
