The Draw

A young boy’s awakening to the conflict between innate gifts and social class is at the center of this searing memoir about the unforgiving sovereignty of money

Hoping to make a killing in New Jersey real estate, the author’s father, Monroe Siegel, takes a draw from his employer against unearned commission. When the recession hits in the 1970s, Monroe finds himself owing a small fortune to his firm. He sinks toward divorce and bankruptcy.

Shamed and enraged by his father’s fate, Lee grows up wondering what society owes a person who has failed materially but preserved his humanity. “Other men got rewarded for their coldheartedness, and often for their dishonesty, while he, Monroe Siegel, who had never hurt anyone, had to groan and stumble through life. Did not kindness deserve an income?”

As a teen, Lee tries to make a different life for himself. He goes to a private college in the Midwest, is forced to leave due to his father’s bankruptcy, and returns to New Jersey to work a series of menial jobs. He enrolls at a state college and then drops out to seek a better existence abroad, only to return to the United States in debt and in despair. Suddenly, a promising new life opens to him. At a price.

The Draw touches on fundamental questions: How do we balance our obligations to ourselves with our obligations to others? What do we owe society when its rules have a legal basis but not a moral one? Written with startling candor and psychological acuity, Lee Siegel’s The Draw is for anyone who has ever struggled with money.

Lee Siegel is the author of five books and nearly a thousand essays, articles, and reviews that have appeared in every major publication in the country, including The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and The New York Review of Books. Winner of a National Magazine Award for Reviews and Criticism, he has appeared numerous times on NPR and the BBC, and on CNBC, CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, and Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, among other radio and television stations. He writes frequently on culture and politics for The New York Timesand The Wall Street Journal.