We all know the story in one way or another. Maybe it's from seeing "Wall Street" by director Oliver Stone, or even watching
those A&E true crime stories about the crooked world, and people, surrounding the fast paced world of Wall Street tycoon. And just to let you know, "The Wolf of Wall Street", isn't any different, and like the A&E show, this is also true. The book starts out in the year 1987, with Jordan Belfort being shown around a Manhattan stock broker agency as he is about to start a job as a connecter. The person who calls businesses, trying to bypass the secretaries to get to the big bosses, so then the call can be past on to the big boy salesmen.
He is told by the mean yuppie tour guide that will be his boss, that he is "lower then pound scum".
He is then taken to another ringleader in this yuppie dark world, that is more warm hearted, and gives him advice like, use bathroom breaks for, self pleasuring time, and indulge in cocain to keep you fast and sharp.
He seems to be stuck in a yuppie hell, surrounded by yuppie demons. Yes, this is our introduction to the stock broker world in the novel. And this is the good stuff. He puts you there in the room with these guys. So close you can almost smell the sweat beading from their brow on a sales plunging day on Wall Street. This is really the meat of the book for me. But once the paranoia starts to kick in full force, the book, on purpose I'm sure, become distracted, even enamored with the hyper drive reality he's experiencing. But there's not enough grounded at times to help readers remember what Jordan's journey is really about, and what, if any, are the main intentions when he arrives at the end.
Now it sets up perfectly his lust of a big, lavish, rich life. And we get there. He's living the dream. But when the dream becomes a nightmare, he seems to linger in the dream like state, far past what my sober mind can expand to. Now this very well could be my fault. But in any published arena, be it book, movie, or magazine article, you must never isolate the audience by entertaining your hazy memories. But now I sound like I'm beating up the story, and I'm not, it's an
interesting story. Some parts, very interesting. But I tend to like the introduction into the world he's setting up, far more then the living through it.
He of course, ends up climbing the latter of success, learning how to snort coke openly in a restaurant, landing his helicopter in drug hazed near death parking job on his extravagant estate, or passing out in bowls of soup, only to be saved by his wife, or what ever hooker he was with at the time.
This is the life of a man at the top of the stock broker world of
business. Swindeling $200 million from investors in a shares fraud scam. Sinking his yacht because he thought he could take on a storm. A very full life this man has lived.
So if you like the young up and comer, fighting his way to the top, then obtaining glory, only to squander it in a drug filled, greed induced ending. Give it a read.