"I've found it impossible to write a decent nonfiction narrative without unusually deep cooperation from my subjects," Lewis explains in his acknowledgments, thanking his traders for allowing him "to enter their lives".
A decent story [graphic].
7. A decent story [graphic].
Mr Blair may not have complete confidence in their judgment, but they are political soulmates, just as Nicholas Ridley and Cecil Parkinson were for Mrs Thatcher.Constructing a decent-sounding narrative of Labour's years in office is not difficult Mr Blair does it most days of the week.
But it's not quite the old Travis, who in the 1980s and '90s could transcend his excellent manners and honorable image to sing decent sinner narratives like "Better Class of Losers" and songs of loneliness without ready solutions like "Diggin' Up Bones" and "Reasons I Cheat".
Or would he be able to completely compartmentalize his indiscretion, believing that what he had done meant nothing, was not a reflection on his marriage, or was at most a victimless crime (even if his wife would be devastated if she found out), thus further questioning the decent-guy narrative.
Commodities promised a decent long-term narrative (Chinese and Indian demand) and the prospect of diversification, the only free lunch in the investment world: positive returns that are not correlated with other asset classes.Then something went wrong.
There's more character work than action in this sweetly sad narrative about a decent man, Thomas Flynn, who can't figure out how to deal with his teenage son, Chris, when the boy dumps sports and schoolwork to take up marijuana and mischief, becoming so destructive that he pulls a stretch in a juvenile correction facility.
And it's no accident that its two central characters are a gifted, vulnerable but insufferably snide little prick, and an older, wiser, fundamentally decent man; or that the narrative hinges tantalisingly on the prospect of their exasperatingly deferred, but surely inevitable, connection.
Goldman seems to have chosen dumb but decent, which is probably the smart narrative to get back in the establishment's good graces, even if it is less accurate.
