A classic text among those of us who work in the bankruptcy world is the legendary chapter "The Saddlebags" from Tom Wolfe's book A Man In Full. The chapter describes with Wolfe's typical style the workout negotiations of a commercial real estate deal gone south. The language is spicy but the mental image is hilarious and compelling.
I just discovered that scene is available as a book excerpt on line here. Enjoy, if this is your sort of thing. (I should add, keep in mind that this is a work of literature, so I mean "enjoy" in a Tom Wolfe over the top sort of way.)
The excerpt reminds me of a story back when I was in practice (perhaps apocryphal). As the story goes, the bankruptcy lawyers were constantly bugging the real estate lawyers to introduce us to their contacts at the banks so that the bankruptcy lawyers could develop client contacts inside the bank. Finally one of the real estate guys fessed up, "Look, taking you guys to a real estate closing is like taking a divorce lawyer to a wedding. The last person you want to meet is a bankruptcy lawyer when you've just signed a deal." A funny line, the spirit of which is captured in "The Saddlebags."
I want to use that line some day.
The bank might end up ruining Croker, wiping him out utterly or it might not. But one thing the bank couldn't change. The bank couldn't change history. There was no rewriting the fact that Charlie Croker was a man who had come from out of nowhere and built up an empire. The empire might crumble and disappear. But so what? So did Napoleon's. Who does the world remember and respect? Croker had something that [he] Raymond Peepgass did not possess--or, rather, something he had never been willing to let off the leash...A certain red dog. Every man had that red dog inside him, but only real men dared let him loose.
Wolfe, Tom
A Man in Full
P.J. O'Rourke wrote a particularly insightful review of A Man in Full. He may have been the the only professional reviewer to understand the business about Epictetus.
"Perhaps apocryphal" is as redundant as "reticent to speak."
Exactly what I thought about Bonfire of the Vanities. The action suddenly stops and he adds a couple of page summary supposedly written a year later about what had happened to everyone. Must have reached a deadline or a page limit!