The “decline and fall” story is one of the great templates of American literature. Given the hyper-mercantilism of our capitalism, we hold a special place for those tales in which an individual who “has it all” throws it away through recklessness or self-destruction – or, more chillingly, simply walks away from decades of accumulation and abandons his ability to exert influence.
In our culture, money is the way we always keep score. To divest oneself of the material trappings of wealth is never perceived as some sort of positive Pauline conversion. Rather, it is considered a deranged existential act, a self-sabotaging refutation of the fundamental objective of American life: winning.
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