A lot of classic American novels -- from James, say, through Howells and Wharton and even up to O'Hara -- are really novels of manners; they're about arranging marriages, making and losing fortunes, finding your place in the social pecking order.
Start by finding your people.
But South Korea's sixth-largest conglomerate, or chaebol, is far from finding good fortune.
Lully, a natural autocrat with a weakness for page boys, came to Paris from Florence, finding his fortune after he was hired as a tutor for a cousin of the young Louis XIV.
Although not as celebrated as 19th-century French novels about social-climbing young men from the provinces, the story of a young woman finding her fortune in New York City is a fetching literary genre of its own.
And then, in the 82nd minute, when the ball popped free in a capricious moment, the substitute forward Miguel Sabah pounced on it, finding great fortune three minutes after entering the game.
In Coelho's telling, the protagonist is an Andalusian shepherd boy (Coelho says that he is that shepherd boy) who, bedding down with his flock in an abandoned church, dreams of finding a fortune at the Pyramids, in Egypt.
Wilbur Ross became rich investing in faltering businesses like steel mills and coal mines, finding a fortune in blue-collar industries that others dismissed as beyond saving.
Even overseas, where foreign aid has implications in a much broader national security context than before 9/11, socioeconomic development is as much a business opportunity as it is a foreign policy challenge -- finding The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid is as much about creating the ground floor as it is getting in on it.
