Last month, the 28-year-old novelist Eleanor Catton won the Man Booker Prize. In the media storm that followed her victory, most commentators focused on her youth, or the fact that Catton is a New Zealander (the only other New Zealander to have won the prize is Keri Hulme). A few zeroed in on a more intriguing element of the novel. Catton’s historical thriller, The Luminaries, is huge. At 832 pages, it’s easily the longest novel to win the Booker, and rivals (in length, at least) War and Peace.
Then again, industry insiders have long known that there’s something curious going on when it comes to time and contemporary reading habits. We’re encouraged to think of this as the age of the now, the instant, the bite-sized; human attention is at a premium and no one, we’re told, has more than a few microseconds to spare.
Any publisher will tell you that, these days, weighty, doorstopper novels are a far easier sell than short stories, which hardly sell at all. When it comes to narrative fiction, it seems that we want to invest vast amounts of time. And more recently, the phenomenon has spread to television. Of course, there are still plenty of bite-sized, stand-alone 30-minute sitcom episodes zipping across the airwaves. But the real attention is being lavished on long-form television drama with storylines that run for months, even years: think Breaking Bad, The Good Wife and Homeland. Interestingly enough, in interviews, Catton admitted that the writing of The Luminaries was “influenced by long-form box-set TV drama”.
So what’s going on? Why – cultural commentators are asking – in the age of the instant, are we falling ever more in love with long-form narratives?
Look closely, and the answer is contained within the question. When so much of the world around us has accelerated to an inhuman pace and when information overload is no longer an adequate expression to describe the fleeting words, images, sounds and ideas that wash over us each day via the digital space, is it really so surprising that we are seeking solace in long-form narrative? Our lives are not just becoming faster, they’re becoming more complex, too.
Perhaps only in long-form narrative can we find an art form complex and subtle enough to accommodate those new complexities. Has a 90-minute film ever captured life in all its glorious, terrifying, mundane complexity as The Sopranos did?
Right now, though, a new trend is intersecting with, and complicating, this trend. That is a contrary and yet coexisting trend for the super-short form, as exemplified by the Twitter app Vine, which allows users to create endlessly looping videos that are just six seconds in length.
Vine has given rise to a wave of user-generated creativity that is reminiscent of the unleashing of creative force that occurred when YouTube first launched. In so doing, it’s proven that there is no necessary connection with long-form content and high quality: super-short can be (in a different way) great, too. Perhaps, then, we’re finally starting to adjust to accelerated living, allowing us to cherish the long form, for the relief that it provides from speed, and the short form, because of its imitation of the pace of our inner lives. As our relationship with time becomes ever more extreme, we may just be entering the age of super-long and super-short.
David Mattin is the lead strategist at trendwatching.com
artslife@thenational.ae
Prophets of Rage
(Fantasy Records)
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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