REDEEMING THE TIMES :

Was Gordon Gekko Right About Greed? (DANIEL AKST, August 4, 2002, NY Times)

In a Tolstoy story titled "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" a peasant named Pahom who longs for loam is granted his wish by the devil. First he gets 40 acres, then 125. Finally, in his acquisitive hunger, he accepts an offer of as much fertile territory as he can encircle in a day on foot. His cost will be just 1,000 rubles.

Of course, his eyes are bigger than his cardiovascular fitness level, and after walking as much land as possible by sunset, he drops dead. Tolstoy answers the title's question in the very last line: "Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed."

That parable about greed seems especially relevant today, amid the bear market and the constant eruption of business scandals. The novelist David Gates cited it in a recent Newsweek column. But the joke is on us, because Pahom's story was written by a man who inherited a 4,000-acre estate. (For the record, that's 10 miles around.)

What the story really shows is that there is nothing like the dashed material longings of others to bring out humanity's strongest censorious impulses...

Here's the one essay in today's Times that shouldn't go straight to the bottom of a bird cage. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 4, 2002 12:46 PM