The Glass Hotel

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020

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Themes

Global Capitalism’s Illusions within an Atomized Society

Contemporary globalized capitalism is a complex phenomenon—and yet, it gives voice to an ancient desire: order, and freedom from others. As with any reductive ideological aspiration, however, this idealized order is usually illusory. As Alkaitis (and his real-life model Bernie Madoff) demonstrates, such an illusion—represented by orderly, quantitative data sets—beguiles both its victims and its perpetrators. In truth, nothing about Alkaitis’s investment scheme made sense. The scheme could have quickly been unmasked as fraudulent, if the characters had been sincerely relational and communicative. Instead, the individuals in The Glass Hotel barely communicate with one another, locked as they are within self-spun “counterlives,” dwelling on past slights or fantastic future projections. With their self-absorption, the characters have time for neither meaningful personal bonds nor scrutiny of their own investments.

Such an atomized society is not a mere symptom of hypercapitalism, but a precondition for it. Despite modern markets’ complex expressions, capitalism has only a few essential truths, most principally: “Buy low, sell high.” Sometimes, this axiom garners a consistent return for an individual—but that individual (such as Alkaitis) may manipulate both knowledge and resources, at others’ expense.

The characters in Mandel’s novel long for a promised freedom from others, and they use art, marriage, or finance to elevate themselves above the fray. Such freedom, however, is a false hope stoked by manipulative actors. The characters are left to exchange lonely, meaningless roles as perpetrator and victim, back and forth as on a treadmill, never truly knowing one another and profiting little.

An atomized society is but one expression of dissolution. The dissolution of human relationship—and the unknowability of persons—is at the novel’s heart. Vincent, the protagonist who does not know even herself, distills this alienation.

The Immateriality of Female Agency within Patriarchal Power Systems

Throughout the novel, women like Vincent, Olivia, and Ella bear powerful witness to the world surrounding them, but these women are left with little materially to show for it. The novel presents this discrepancy as the consequence of entrenched patriarchal systems of power.

It is common to describe self-made tycoons in terms of their genius, ascribing their wealth to uncanny business acumen. In The Glass Hotel, this formula is reversed. Johnathan Alkaitis is nearly as deluded as his victims; he lives in a self-made, self-affirming fantasy and ignores reality’s intrusions. Faisal invests poorly and is seen as a failure by his wealthy family. He tragically dies by suicide rather than face life as a failure. Even Paul becomes wealthy (in renown, if not in riches) without originating a single idea as an artist or composer. It is suggested that this masculine “success” is due to systems that privilege men’s inherited power and wealth. These systems invest men with undue authority, but with no burden of accountability for their power to harm.

By contrast, Ella Kaspersky is dismissed as a pessimistic crank when she points out that Alkaitis’s scheme is too good to be true. Her work is only recognized after tremendous, avoidable damage has been done. Olivia paints a powerful and honest portrait revealing a callous young man to the world, only to find herself unrecognized and ruined at the hands of the subject’s younger brother. Vincent, who is alive to the world and her potential within in it, disappears at sea, not even recognized as the “wife” of the wealthy man whose riches she enjoyed but did not own. The intelligence and sensitivity of these women bring them no closer to material agency.

Mandel suggests that such women find “ownership” through sharp observation and testimony, but not through homeownership or personal bank accounts. Ella is not rewarded for her work, but she is vindicated for it. Olivia maintains power so long as she envisions her life through art, and loses power as she loses touch with her artistic inspiration. Vincent, often the object of male attention, turns her own gaze outward using the camera eye. Whatever security these women retain from these fleeting victories, they stand to lose a great deal more.

The View from Nowhere: Literary Usage of Journalistic Disinterest

The Glass Hotel is modeled directly on people and events torn from recent headlines. Specifically, Jonathan Alkaitis and his Ponzi scheme are inspired by the real-life activities of criminal investor Bernie Madoff, who was arrested at the same time, and under many similar conditions, as those described in the novel. Mandel’s work thus continues a long tradition of novels interacting with journalism, in which fiction sometimes goes so far as to adopt the duties of traditional journalism. Inasmuch as this allows the novelist creative license to report the day’s news, such a practice also borrows the perspectives, and the weaknesses, of standard journalistic practice.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the explosion of print sources brought a corresponding explosion of journalistic voices. Muckraking journalists were writing for several independent, competing news sources, and they reported on price-fixing and monopolization of industries by robber barons. While this journalism often effected enormous political change, novelists such as Upton Sinclair humanized such economic conflict in novels like The Jungle, portraying the lives of ordinary people caught in the dangerous work of unregulated turn-of-the-century meat packing. As a downside, both the journalism and the fiction depended on melodrama to make their point, flattening nuance.

As the 20th century merged with the 21st, journalism (and the fiction inspired by it) changed. As “traditional” forms of print and broadcast media were conglomerated under corporate interests, journalists were tasked with a sometimes-impossible objectivity, purporting to take “a view from nowhere” in which all sides of a debate were impartially presented. Such reporting favors nuance over a strong stance, and trusts an empirical collection of reports over the strong opinion of a single journalist. The Glass Hotel takes a similarly journalistic “view from nowhere” about vexing economic issues, rendering them as an incoherent parade of sensory data and individual impressions. The victims are treated as victims, but so (in journalistic fairness) are the victimizers. Like contemporary journalism, The Glass Hotel resists the temptations of sensationalism in favor of a cool detachment. Such a dispassionate tone suggests no one is to blame for anything, and that systematic economic manipulation is an ancient and unassailable element of realism.