Unless, that is, you recognize this opening as a summary of “The Great Gatsby,” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel about the innocence of the mountebank and his martyrdom at the hands of the wealthy married couple he tries to come between. This reversal is part of what makes “Gatsby” such an essential American text. In “Gatsby,” money is clearly corrupting once you have it, because the having imbues you with the “vast carelessness” of Tom and Daisy Buchanan or the cold-eyed manipulative spirit of the men who use Gatsby as their front. “If he’d of lived he’d of been a great man,” Gatsby’s father says before the funeral. But in dying young, Gatsby achieved the secret goal of all Americans: to get rich while remaining citizens of Eden, innocents till the last.

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Persons: topick, charlatan, ”, Scott Fitzgerald’s, —, Ross Douthat, Gatsby, Tom, Daisy Buchanan, It’s, Gatsbys, who’s, Sam Bankman, Elizabeth Holmes, Holmes, Bernie Madoff Locations: America, Eden