Henry Miller on Wall Street

“I said I would take them inside the stock exchange, on the floor itself. I described that mad house in detail, ordering myself slices of Anaconda Copper, Amalgamated Tin, Tel & Tel, anything I could remember of that crazy Wall Street past whether volatile, combustible or analgesic. I ran from one corner of the room to the other, buying and selling like a maniac, standing at the vice consul’s commode and telephoning my broker to flood the market, calling my banker to make a loan of fifty thousand immediately, calling the telegraph jakes to take a string of telegrams, calling the grain and wheat trusters in Chicago to dump a load in the Mississippi, calling the Secretary of the Interior to inquire if he had passed that bill about the Indians, calling my chauffeur to tell him to put a new spare tire on the back behind the rumble seat, calling my shirt-maker to curse him for making the neck too tight on the pink and white shirt and what about my initials. I ran across the seat and gobbled a sandwich at the Exchange Buffet. I said hello to a friend of mine who was going upstairs to his office to blow his brains out."

--Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi (1941).