ENTITLED by Leonard H. Orr - Excerpt, Interview, What's next

 

To protect their lavish allowances, four charismatic sisters in their thirties try to seduce, cajole, and mislead their less well-off neighbor Benjamin, who their father has hired to investigate an attempt to smother him while he was in the hospital recovering from a car crash. 

Their feckless brother responds by threatening Benjamin with a shotgun, while their socialite mother falsely confesses to the crime. Trying to dominate everyone is their father, a wheeling, dealing, helicopter-flying entrepreneur who is afraid he might have hallucinated the smothering, even more afraid that it might have been real, and terrified that he might be losing control of his family and fortune. Desperate, he implements a devious and dastardly scheme . . .

Played out on the fashionable Connecticut shore and Manhattan's Upper East Side, the shenanigans of the entitled rich don't prevent Benjamin from finding the truth, and maybe even love.

EXCERPT

                                                                       Prologue

 

            He lies in a hospital bed, bandaged to the nines and attached to the latest instruments of artificial life. Images flicker before him, and fluttery lines on a video screen vouch for brain activity, but few would call it thinking. In his fractured world he doesn’t hear the beep of machines nor feel the stab of needles. He doesn’t remember instructing his driver to stay ahead of the Friday night traffic before it peaked. He doesn’t recall the rise in the road that hid the jam ahead, doesn’t recall the curse of his driver when the car reached the top of the hill, the scream of the brakes, the veering off, the tumbling.

            The police have measured tire marks, a coroner examined the driver’s body, and chemists have parsed the dead man’s blood. They found a routine case of too much velocity and not enough time and redirected to more opaque disasters.

            Visitors to the hospital are where the murk sets in. Men Charlie Cantling hired for the corporation—and a few women—arrive, look grim, and muse aloud about his chances and, in silence, about their jobs. They’d love to redo the pyramid of who reports to whom, each with a different design, but ancient arrangements leave them neutered and send them to lunch with headhunters. Real power resides with Cantling’s children, who arrive bringing a minimum of tears and some aptitude for scheming. With Charlie likely dying, they’ll need cold blood for decisions to come, and over the years, with their father’s help, they’d acquired it. Some have seen the family lawyer, who advises inaction and waiting for further advice. Some, whom Cantling would call them ungrateful, have lawyers of their own.

            When he’s little changed day to day, the flow of visitors thins, for this protracted dying is somewhere between nuisance and tragedy, and doctors still can’t restore the dead. Then the surprises begin. His bones begin to mend, his limbs and organs start to function, he has moments of near-lucidity. The doctors admit he has chances, but early progress is crucia, and his may have been too slow. He’s in his late sixties and his health was good, but setbacks or stagnation are still major risks. The most reasonable hope is he’ll stabilize, neither paralyzed nor mobile, not numb and not alert, sometimes sensible, often not, born to command and commanding nothing.

            In his lucid moments the doctors warn him: because of drugs and trauma, you can’t trust what you think you know, can’t tell the real from the imagined. About his brain’s wilder renderings—wingless flying, jumps in time, cameos of the dead—he agrees. One scene from the present is too coherent to shrug off and so vivid that in druggy variation it repeats again and again. He’s on his back in his hospital bed and half-awake. Suddenly, there’s a pillow on his face, a strangely heavy heap of fluff pressing on nose and mouth. He fights. The weight feels huge, relentless. He struggles to breathe but sucks in fabric and stuffing. He’s suffocating. His hands rip at forearms above him. I won’t let these bastards win, he thinks. Never. He writhes and swings his head, finds a pocket of air—and breathes and steels himself for further struggle.

            The weight lifts. “Tough old guy,” whispers a voice he can’t identify. “The man’s mind doesn’t work but his body keeps fighting. We’ll have to find another way.” “It would be the right thing,” someone whispers, “for him”. “Yeah,” the first voice whispers, “for him and everybody else.

            As his strength returns and his drug-induced delirium subsides, he notifies the authorities and calls for guards and cameras. He exults and he rages. Phantoms or not, the whisperers have lost. Their chances have died, and he hasn’t.

            It takes him weeks to fully recognize his mistake.

INTERVIEW

On writing:

 

How did you do research for your book?

I needed to research aspects of beekeeping, horseback riding, kill fees in deal-making, etc. Google was extremely helpful.

 

Which was the hardest character to write? The easiest?

One of the Cantling sisters—the sweet, clueless, at times seductive, appearance-obsessed Melanie—was hard to write. I may have found it easiest to write the rebellious Jody Gould.

 

In your book you make a reference to ammonia-scented honey. How did you come up with this idea?

It popped into my head one day and evolved over a period of weeks.

 

What made you write a book about the relationship between two families, one of them wealthy and entitled, the other struggling to remain middle-class?

I don’t know. I started with a persistent image of an annoying helicopter flying at night. The story, obliquely inspired by some of my experiences, evolved from that and developed its own logic.

 

There are many books out there about wealth affecting families. What makes yours different?

I’m familiar with the milieu I write about, so I hope people can learn something about it. I’m particularly interested in the debilitating effects of wealth and success on family life, especially children. Also, I try not to over-explain. I want readers to use their own experience and perception to fill in the blanks.

 

Your book is set in Stonefield, Connecticut. Have you ever been there?

Stonefield is a fictional town. It resembles several along the Connecticut shore, where I’ve spent some time.

 

Do you have another profession besides writing?

Yes. I built and run a family office.

 

Do you ever get writer’s block? What helps you overcome it?

I used to think writing was a constant struggle between me and writer’s block. Now I feel the experience is more like a vigil, where I need to wait out my lack of ideas until something useful strikes me. The only things that help are time and rest.

 

What is your next project?

I’m writing a novel about madness and greed and murder on Wall Street.

 

 What is a favorite compliment you have received on your writing?

That ENTITLED was “wise.”

 

How are you similar to or different from your lead character?

I share Benjamin’s compulsive perfectionism and loyalty to family. But I’m more worldly—and more prickly.

 

What is something you had to cut from your book that you wish you could have kept?

There was a subplot where Jody and a local hooligan sabotaged each other’s vehicles. It was fun but a distraction.

 

What advice do you have for budding writers?

When I was younger I received all kinds of good advice, often from myself. But I didn’t, or couldn’t, follow it. Nevertheless here goes:

1)    Write about what you know.

2)    Find good readers and editors and listen carefully to their reactions. By and large, the angrier it makes you, the more accurate it is.

 

On rituals:

 

Do you write every day?

No. On too many days my imagination fails me and my mind's blank.

 

What is your writing schedule?

I generally leave my early mornings open, hoping that I can write.

 

In today’s tech savvy world, most writers use a computer or laptop. Have you ever written parts of your book on paper?

I often wake up at night with ideas for writing. I jot them down on a notepad near my

bed. They’re usually useful but sometimes worthless.

 

 Fun stuff:

 

Favorite travel spot?

Rome.

 

Favorite dessert?

A piece of chocolate.

 

If you were stuck on a deserted island, which 3 books would you want with you?

The Complete Works of Shakespeare. Crime and Punishment. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

 

 Any hobbies?

Tennis. Reading. Biking. Music from Bach to Shostakovich.

 

If there is one thing you want readers to remember about you, what would it be?

I value my privacy and don’t enjoy self-promotion, but it seems to be how books and a lot else are sold these days. So indulge me.

 

What is something you've learned about yourself during the pandemic?

I’m comfortable as a semi-recluse.

 

What is your favorite holiday?

Thanksgiving,

 

What is the oldest item of clothing you own?

A sweater from Norway.

 

WHAT'S NEXT

I’m writing a second novel, which is not a sequel to ENTITLED. It’s about greed and madness and death on Wall Street. For background to the new novel I want to pass along two stories—one a parable, the other true—which explain a lot of Wall Street behavior.

                                              THE PARABLE OF THE GOAT THIEF

A wise old goat thief takes a young goat thief to the hills to teach him the tricks of the trade. One day the two see two separate herds, one of them small, the other much larger. The older thief asks the younger, “Which herd would you steal from?”

            “That’s easy,” the young thief says. “Steal from the bigger herd. Its owner has all those goats. He’ll never notice.”

            “Big mistake,” says the older thief. “Never steal a goat from a man who has a lot of goats—because he really likes having goats. He takes care of them, feeds them, grooms them, counts them every night. He’ll know when one is missing and he’ll call the sheriff. No, steal from the man who doesn’t have many goats. Maybe he’s drunk and lazy, maybe he’s busy with other things. But clearly, he doesn’t value his goats. He might not even notice that he’s lost one.”

                                                    THE WISDOM OF DOING NOTHING

 Around 2012 I met a young man who’d been one of the first twenty employees of Google. He had recently decided he’d outlived his usefulness at Google and, on very good terms, had left the company he still loved.

 His entire fortune, worth a few million dollars, consisted of Google shares he’d been given in the early days.

 He had just met with a stockbroker who would be paid a commission for every trade. The broker advised him to sell nearly all his Google stock and buy shares in various companies the broker recommended. This would supply diversification.

 A mutual friend encouraged the ex-Googler to ask my opinion. I said: you own a piece of a company you know very well and believe to be one of the great companies of the world. Now this commissioned stockbroker wants you to sell your stock, pay a third of the proceeds in taxes, and invest in companies neither you nor he know anything about. And when there’s any excuse at all, the broker will recommend selling more of your investments, maybe the rest of your Google stock, and create still more commissions for himself.

 Alas, relying on his broker, the ex-googler went on to sell the vast majority of his Google shares—when, to become extremely rich, all he had to do was nothing. 

                                                            

 Leonard H. Orr has written for The Village Voice, The New York Times, and other publications. A graduate of Swarthmore College, he has also been an editor and investment manager, where he’s been a witness to the ambition and entitlement and sorrow his novel portrays.