Your humble narrator, a novelist, was featured at a literary festival with Scott Turow, the lawyer who wrote Presumed Innocent. It got me thinking. Books from lawyers like him, John Grisham and David Baldacci fill the bestseller lists. But where are the accountants?
I put this question to a group of friends who developed a theory to explain the discrepancy. A lawyer’s job is to delete distracting facts until one is left with an emotionally affecting narrative.
In other words, lawyers are identical to novelists, except for the fact that they earn money, drive big cars, live in huge houses with blonde trophy wives called Meghan and deserve to die die die dieeeee.
Not that I’m jealous. No serious novelist would lower himself to “sell out” by doing anything as artistically questionable as “earning money”.
Accountants do the opposite to lawyers and novelists. They’re trained to gather all related facts to create a comprehensive record which is entirely free of emotion and as dry as possible.
“The better the accountant, the worse the novel,” said one of the professional people present, made philosophical by my presence, or, more likely, the six empty bottles of Corona in front of him.
That got me thinking again. What sort of adventure stories would serious accountants write? I decided to write one on their behalf. I call this: “Harry Potter and the Balance Sheet”.
Once upon a time there was a boy called Harry Potter, whose uncle told him he was a liability. But the boy felt unwilling to accept this designation without qualification, since his parents were off-balance sheet, ie, missing.
One day, a strange visitor named Hagrid gave the boy professional advice. “This advice is provided to you without prejudice,” he said. “Your fortunes may go up or they may go down. But due diligence requires me to inform you that you are not a liability of the muggle class, but an asset of the wizard class.”
The young asset travelled to Hogwart’s School for a set of “add value” courses expected by analysts to cause a significant appreciation in his book value. In class, Harry met a female asset called Hermione and thought about having a merger with her.
But he was distracted because an outside party called Voldemort earmarked him for 100 percent depreciation, ie, death. A huge takeover battle followed, with Voldemort attempting a hostile acquisition followed by a total liquidation of Harry and associated assets.
Harry won by using an unlisted extraordinary item called heroism. In a huge EGM of interested parties at Hogwarts Hall, Harry found that his book value had increased considerably.
However, there was no merger with Hermione. “Also, I haven’t found my parents, who are still listed as receivables,” Harry said. As a result, analysts suggested that there may be room for subsidiary or spin-off adventures.
The following day I emailed the story to the gang. They said that it was not as child-friendly as the original, but it did have a refreshingly different feel about it. Will it be appearing on bestseller lists soon?
Probably not. JK Rowling’s famously large crew of copyright lawyers will make sure of that. Unless, of course, they are all too busy writing novels. Heh-heh-heh-heh.
The writer is columnist and journalist.
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