Trust, says Diaz, explores “wealth and this paradoxical relationship between the extreme isolation and extreme reach that come with it.” The book opens with a novel within the novel called Bonds, a story in the style of Edith Wharton about a powerful financier and his brilliant, somewhat mysterious wife. Just as with In the Distance there was something unresolved with the Western genre in the American canon and its relationship with American history, I started thinking that something similar happened with wealth.” “There was a continuity there that was meaningful to me. “It was related to In the Distance, because it’s also about loneliness,” says the author. Books come to Diaz in scenes, and Trust was born from a poignant one: a wealthy man gazing out from a high-rise office at a welder who cannot look back. Still, Diaz didn’t waste much time before jumping back into writing. But for Diaz, years are more important than miles. You might think that living within walking distance of a novel’s setting would impact the project, especially after writing a Western set in a distant American wasteland. On a tour of Carroll Gardens, he points out the street where some of his characters live, historic landmarks, and iconic Italian American bakeries. In the Distance tackled the Western from uncanny new angles, and Trust unpacks the stories we tell ourselves about money, what they capture, and what they exclude.ĭiaz lives about one mile and 100 years from the world of his new novel.

It is perhaps more accurate, however, to call him a literary myth-buster, a writer who breaks down and reexamines classic American narratives. Technically, Diaz is an author of historical fiction, insofar that his books are set in the past.

Now, for the literary equivalent of his major-label debut, he has written a genre-bending, time-skipping story about New York City’s elite in the roaring ‘20s and Great Depression. Diaz burst onto the literary scene in 2017 when his first novel, In the Distance, made its way from the slush pile at a small press to the short list for the Pulitzer Prize. The library has granted Diaz a private visit for an interview about his new novel, Trust, published by Riverhead Books this week. He longingly gestures toward a stack of old maps. COVID protocol is still in effect-no touching the books. This stately room filled with black ash woodwork has long been one of his favorite haunts, but today is his first time back since the Center for Brooklyn History closed to the public during the pandemic. Tucked away in a corner of Brooklyn’s Othmer Library, Hernan Diaz waves his hand over a shelf of 19th-century land records.

In the Distance by Hernan Diaz