Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth by Margaret Atwood
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
“Lovely weather we’re having today!”
“Aye. We’ll pay for it later.”
Within these scant few words lurk every functioning human being’s sense of fairness – of balance – of the idea of debt. An idea which, recent experiments have demonstrated, is older than humanity itself.
This short but action-packed read won’t get you out of debt, nor shed much light on the machinations of High Finance, newly lain bare at the time of its publication in 2008. What it does, in Margaret Atwood’s glittering prose, is detail the place of debt in our culture: in mythology, in religion, in crime.
We start with origins: stories of primal debt (are each of us in debt for our very existence?), of genetics (can our nearest genetic neighbours appreciate the idea of debt? Spoiler: they can!), and of ancient myths of blood feud and balance.
From there the reader is taken on a tour of the many ways debt and sin have been seen as equivalents: the criminal who, on emerging from jail into the bright light of day having ‘paid his debt to society’ being the most obvious – but weird if you come to think of it – example. How has society actually benefitted from his incarceration? What has he paid us? This debt is all but inpossible to quantify, yet the crossover between financial debt and sin has worked its way into our very language. ‘Amends’, ‘Redeem’; ‘Saviour’.
We now turn to Atwood’s home turf: story. In a way, every debt is a story. It has a beginning (how did I get into debt?), a middle (how do I cope with it, and how does that change me?) and an end (Do I get out of it? If so, how? And if not, what are the consequences?) And why is it so dangerous to be a Miller’s daughter?
Of course Dr Faustus and Ebenezer Scrooge turn up at this point. In fact Scrooge plays quite a major part, by in a way subverting the debtor’s story. Debt is about deadlines, and Scrooge has his deadline extended by a vital 48 hours – time to see the error of his ways.
The final chapter brings Scrooge’s tale right up to the present. Who is this miscreant’s equivalent today? What is he doing, how does it harm the rest of us, and how can he ‘redeem himself’?
In just 200 pages (plus notes, bibliography and index), this book packs fascinating detail, some of which even I hadn’t come across during my research in the writing of ‘The Price of Time’.
Two things it could be said to underplay are the racial aspect of debt (Clifford’s tower, scene of the debt-driven massacre of York’s Jewish population, is within walking distance of where I live), and a contemplation of the effect of time on debt: debts of finance, unlike debts of misbehaviour, in our society increase exponentially with time, giving them a life of their own. A life whose story – and whose evil – we underestimate at our peril.
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