There's a story by Jorge Luis Borges in which the narrator (Borges himself, naturally) meets a young stranger while sitting on a bench by the Charles River. After speaking with the stranger for a few minutes, Borges realizes that the stranger is, in fact, himself as a young man. Young Borges is equally astonished to meet himself near the end of his own life.

I sometimes feel the same way when I think about David Denby. The 60-year-old film critic for the New Yorker sometimes seems like a glimpse of myself in forty years. His career is eerily similar to the one I sometimes dream about, and it's certainly plausible: respected film critic, author of an appreciative book on the Western Canon (which is the sort of book I wanted to write when I was eighteen), and now author of American Sucker, a memoir about his misadventures in the stock market.

I haven't bought or read American Sucker yet, but based on the articles about it, it's disheartening to think of this man as my future self: he lost $900,000 in the Internet boom, saw his marriage fall apart, and became fixated on Internet porn. Still, just as his Great Books made my imaginary book about the Western Canon more or less irrelevant, American Sucker may just do the same for my imaginary book about finance. Blast it! Denby's always one step ahead.

I do have a better title for my imaginary book, though, courtesy of '80's insider trader Dennis Levine, who used to refer to the bundles of cash he kept on hand as his "walking-around money." Tweaking this slightly, the name of my book was going to be Walking Around Money.