Speculation’s Profit and Loss: Philosophical, Financial, and Fictional Wagers in Tom McCarthy’s Remainder

Abstract

Abstract: Tom McCarthy’s Remainder foregrounds speculation as a prominent theme, not least in the narrator’s financial investments. This essay uses those risky wagers as means of exploring the intersecting resonances of speculation in terms of its philosophical, financial, and narrative (speculative fictional) resonances. The novel’s interweaving of these senses reveals competing speculative strategies: on the one hand, a wager that takes limited information but attempts to delve into the unknown and return with a profit; on the other, a loss that nonetheless informs as to what supposedly established givens ultimately do not work.