Q: Before we start, this isn’t a real interview, is it?
A: No, but it’s a better way to give an introduction to the book rather than just writing a few paragraphs of prose.
Q: OK, so tell me about the book.
A: Well, it’s a comedy about the increasing use of economics terms in everyday life – you know, the dating market, social capital, signalling.
Q: And what on Earth possessed – er, what led you to write a comedy about economics discourse?
A: Well, I’d already come up with the central plot, setting and motive. And it made sense that the characters would try to analyse each other in economics terms. It’s kind of a fun exercise to dissect relationships in economic terms, and quite addictive.
Q: Yeah, it’s a bit gross sometimes, to be honest.
A: Yeah, it can be kind of offensive and dehumanising, I agree. And part of the book is describing what it does to people.
Q: So you wrote it as an attack on economics?
A: No, not at all. I mean, economics is known as the dismal science because it tells some hard truths, but there’s nothing intrinsically bad or selfish about understanding supply-demand curves or incentives. And that side of things isn’t really the problem. It’s more about what happens when you take economic thinking too far.
Q: So did anything prompt this in particular?
A: I still read blogs, and I find my scrolling turns to two types of blog article: the first is techy, statsy articles about data. The writers tell you nothing about themselves, give no stories, and are always congratulating themselves for being aware of their own biases and knowing what the plural of anecdote isn’t. Then there’s fun relationship blogs, who tell the internet everything that’s ever happened to them and make ridiculous over-generalisations from a single data point.
Q: Sounds like Paul and Kim.
A: Yes, that part’s about what happens when these two people get together, the econometrician and the relationship blogger. They were only meant to be minor characters, with Kim as an observer-narrator, but they kind of took over the book and squeezed everyone out.
Q: They’re a great couple. It’s practically a rom-com.
A: Yes, and I did think about packaging it that way. After all, the rom-com market is probably bigger than the economics-comedy market –
Q: Yeah, I think it might be. Readers seem to prefer vampire romances to jokes about the sunk cost fallacy.
A: They do, but in a rom-coms the couple getting together, or getting back together, is the most important thing, and this book is kind of the opposite. It’s really about a woman who isn’t trying to get with the guy.
Q: At least not consciously.
A: Well, I’ll leave that to the reader.
People don’t need an umbrella. They just want someone to walk in the rain beside them and help them shrug it off.
Q: So you mentioned earlier about what economic thinking does to people. What sort of thing did you mean?
A: Well, I think firstly, if your instinct is always to analyse the trade-offs, you end up keeping the receipts for every act of basic friendship, and then only valuing the things that cost something to give up. And if you pay too much attention to those things, you risk failing to see what your friends and lovers really need from you.
Q: Like Kim says – they don’t need an umbrella. They just want someone to walk in the rain beside them and help them shrug it off.
A: Yeah, I think so, and there’s this big argument between Paul and Kim where they sort of resolve it, and the way they resolve it is by expressing it in economics language. And that’s when Paul finally gets it, when it’s explained in those terms. So the analysis side of things is useful for reflection, but it’s best done after the event, because you can only really notice one thing at a time, and sometimes it’s better to notice the obvious things staring you in the face and deal with them first.
Q: Absolutely. So is the book is based on your own experiences? Some of it looks pretty close to the bone.
A: Not exactly, but I did serve my time in nerd purgatory, although a little earlier. In my college, the gender ratio was pretty debilitating and the women definitely had the upper hand socially, but it wasn’t really like that, and there certainly wasn’t anyone like Tilda. I probably took more inspiration from when I was working in consultancy. There would be these new hires, often STEM PhDs, and they’d be a certain type, you know…
Q: Nerds?
A: I’d say they had high levels of academic achievement but low social capital. But then a year later, they’ve got a load of responsibility, they get more confident at speaking up in meetings, then they’re bossing people about, and eventually that feeds into social situations. They’re transformed – even physically they often fill out as well. And there’s a lot of potential comedy, especially when they’re in the middle ground, like Paul and Patrick – potentially quite attractive to women but not aware of it yet.
Q: I mean do you really think it’s plausible that these successful guys could be so unaware and unconfident?
A: Oh absolutely. I mean, you’ve got to remember that these people are starting from the absolute rock-bottom of the league tables in sexual and social capital.
Q: Bottom of the league? Oxford undergraduates? Come on
A: No, really. When you’re eighteen, status is based on totally different things. No-one cares about how rich they’re going to be in ten years time, or even really how rich they are now. At that age, status is much more about things like life experience and street credibility and risk-taking, and sports obviously, for men, and these guys often score low on a lot of these. They’re a long way behind, and especially on understanding of women. And if you kind of miss the boat on that, it becomes harder to learn, so you retreat a bit.
Q: But that’s their choice right?
A: It is, and Dale says that in hindsight, and even says it’s a choice that he doesn’t regret. A lot of it’s immaturity maybe. But it’s still real. He’s quite self-aware in many ways.
Q: Yeah, he knows he’s obnoxious but he carries on anyway.
A: Yeah, and it was fun to write in that voice – he represents that sort of transactional view of human affairs and that sort of thing. People think Oxbridge students are all arrogant snobs, but I think it would be fairer to call us insufferable blowhards. Really, it’s more like a kind of refuge for a group of sort of over-analytic types to lose themselves in silly arguments and in-jokes and games, while feeling like they’re normal people, which they aren’t really. And because the colleges are so small and self-contained, they’re a bit like people marooned on an island that have come up with their own language. And I wanted to get that cliquiness in, and how it’s so off-putting to outsiders.
Q: Yeah, you got that across all right. And that’s where the modified words and
expressions comes from, is it? Like “and that’s a very small if” or thenadays and so on?
A: Yes. That came about because I wanted to root the story in that island culture I was talking about. And then I thought if I got enough of these repurposed words and expressions I could make a comedy out of it – which was a terrible idea, as it turned out.
Q: Why do you say that?
A: Well, it gets a bit annoying after a while.
Q: Yes, it really does.
A: But then once it was a comedy, I started to put more asides and observations in, and I realised that the people were funny enough anyway and I didn’t need all that verbal play. So I cut a lot of it out.
Q: You did? OK, well, I think that was a good decision, as far as it went.
You talk like you’re these great altruists, but you’re basically keeping the receipts for every half-decent act of friendship or common courtesy.
Q: So tell me about yourself.
A: I’m an author. I’ve written a book called Revealed Preference that I’m promoting.
Q: OK, thanks, that’s a big help. Now maybe I don’t need to ask this, after your last answer, but is there one of your characters that you maybe identify with?
A: Not really. But I’d say there are elements of Paul that are based on a character my wife invented. Like, if she’s telling other people a story and I’m in it, she’ll put on a voice which is nothing like my voice and say things I’d never say. And this version of me is an interesting character in his own right, and I’ve used some of that.
Q: I see. So it’s based on someone that’s based on you, but who you think is nothing like you.
A: Nothing like me. That guy in my wife’s stories is a complete idiot.
Q: I can believe it. What about Kim? Where does she come from?
A: Well, I needed this outsider character. You know, real people don’t like Oxbridge people…
Q: I can’t think why
A: …so you need someone for the reader to empathise with, and I thought someone blunt would contrast well with the Oxbridge style. Then she and Paul evolved naturally, and the misunderstandings and misallocation of resources, all that worked well with the other themes of the book all just came together perfectly.
Q: Like a Pigouvian adjustment mechanism?
A: Not really. More like the Central Limit Theorem or something. Pigouvian adjustment mechanisms are what you use when –
Q: Well, I’m not sure we’ve got time for that. But before we go, you haven’t told me what the book’s about yet?
A: Oh, a contemporary country-house murder. Two disappearances, one body. Nine umbrellas. A lot of rain.
Q: …and a lot of annoying people. Revealed Preference is out May 5 and available on Amazon.
A: Thanks, it’s been a pleasure.