“We were now a culture of narcissism–yes, of course, again this had been said with such frequency it was meant to be ignored–but we were more: we were a species of it.” 

“That was how far we’d come: the best way to protect nature was by attaching a dollar value to it.”

– Andrew Lisptein, The Vegan 

If Fight Club and The Wolf of Wall Street had a love child, it would be Andrew Lipstein’s new novel, The Vegan. Set in midtown Manhattan, The Vegan follows the story of Hershel Caine, a young urban professional making it big on Wall Street. His new start-up quantitative hedge fund, Atra Arca, is on the verge of perfecting a price-predicting algorithm that will forever change the stock market. It all comes crumbling down when at a dinner party, Herschel essentially roofies the drink of his wife’s obnoxious college roommate, Birdie Barnes, causing her to suffer a life-threatening fall that leaves her in a vegetative (no pun intended) state. 

Consumed by guilt, Herschel becomes extremely empathetic towards animals, an odd consequence of a guilty conscience that would be difficult to believe were it not for Lipstein’s omniscient narrator detailing Herschel’s every thought, emotion, and action during his encounters with animals. For instance, itching to relive his new found empathetic capabilities, Herschel runs across Manhattan — at midnight, in his pajamas — in search of an animal. Finding none, not even a rat (which is hard to believe), he decides to break into Prospect Park Zoo. At the zoo, he goes up to the red panda’s cage and, feeling that he is not vulnerable enough to spark an intimate connection, decides that the best course of action is… to take off his clothes? Yes, he takes off his clothes and begins soliloquizing about shame, all while butt-naked in front of a red panda who is, understandably, frazzled.

The red panda moment is hilarious, but it is only the beginning of a slow descent into madness. At the climax of his manic episode, Herschel burns down the computer servers that host the only copy of the price-predictive algorithm his start-up company has spent millions of dollars developing. Professing that the world is not ready for such life-altering technology, Herschel, like a martyr, sacrifices his company to save the economy from ruin and manipulation. As the building goes up in flames, the great defender of free-trade markets launches into another mania-induced run, stopping at a museum to observe some Italian Futurism paintings.

In one of the art pieces, we are told that Herschel sees “a cry for the natural, and not some Thoreau bullshit, which was a lament for the past, but a way to live in the future, to wield conflict, to actively work against the order crystallizing around us.” If such a grand revelation is meant to inspire us to dismantle the status quo, then we probably should not have burned down the servers of an economy-revolutionizing algorithm. But alas, Hershel sees his actions as part of a larger-than-life plan, expressed through many grandiose statements about the “interconnected nature of humanity,” the “power of language,” and the need to change the status quo. Hershel’s quips are not necessarily bad — they contain valid observations about the world today, but they are pretty basic and laughable coming from a 38-year-old man who only just now found basic empathy for animals and, worse, hails it as the epitome of human connection to nature. If anything, this lack of self-awareness makes Hershel’s catharsis read like true “Thoreau bullshit,” pure pseudo-intellectual baloney.

Like watching a toddler learn that his emotions have names, The Vegan is a true feat of free indirect discourse, taking readers through the mental gymnastics of performative masculinity, which stoic, rich, charismatic, and handsome Hershel dutifully exemplifies. It is almost easy to forget that becoming this idealized male requires forfeiting one’s feelings, and by extension, emotional connections. No wonder Hershel, an emotionally immature yuppie, can’t help converting his excess guilt into pity and sympathy for animals, leading to the guilt-induced veganism cliche that underscores the whole plot: guilt consumes Herschel thus, Herschel can not consume meat. 

It would be easy to frame The Vegan as yet another misconstrued commentary on modern-day masculinity à la Fight Club or The Wolf of Wall Street — one of those things that are obvious critiques of toxic masculinity that, for some reason, go over the heads of die-hard male fans. Nonetheless, Lipstein’s second novel might provide a more realistic resolution to men’s megalomaniac tendencies: eat some delicious steak and have a good cry like the rest of us normies. Or, if you’d prefer this alternative message: don’t roofie people’s drinks! You could leave them incapacitated and ruin their and their loved ones’ lives, but worst of all, you might no longer be able to eat eggs and might perhaps burn down your multimillion-dollar company! Woe be upon ye!

Lipstein’s The Vegan runs on a ridiculous premise of guilt-induced veganism. But this does not stop it from being an enjoyable read (unless you dislike yuppies, then I suggest you take up another book because this one is full of them). I’ll be the first to admit that Herschel is quite a character, and if you can look past his flaws, the story of how he became vegan and subsequently stopped being vegan might amuse you.