"What kind of bank has no money?" The Intangible Economy in Paul Murray's The Mark and the Void

The Mark and the Void (TMATV) (Murray, 2015) presents a dubious representation of reality for marketing purposes on its cover. It is an interesting form of paratext given that the novel is concerned with capitalism's manipulation of reality, a concept which is outlined in Capitalist Realism (Fisher, 2009). Created as a response to the 2008 financial crash while living through the effects of said crash, does Fisher's work still apply to Murray's narrative created under contemporary capitalism? Exploring PR within and surrounding TMATV as a lens for Fisher's work can help answer this question. TMATV focuses on an investment banker, Claude, and a writer, Paul. Primarily situated in Dublin's Irish Financial Services Centre (IFSC), Paul shadows Claude under the pretext of research for his next novel while actually attempting a bank heist. The Irish economy depicted in the narrative is one where "real world effects matter only insofar as they register at the level of (PR) appearance" (Fisher, 2009, pp. 46). A representation of reality is constructed to fuel growth, and when TMATV depicts these constructions in relation to the tangible economy i.e. the physical assets economy, Fisher's ideas largely still apply. However, when capitalist storytelling takes place in the intangible economy i.e. the ideas economy, we see the limitations of Fisher's work. Understanding the intangible economy is crucial to understanding whether the theories in Capitalist Realism apply to TMATV and other works.

A scathing review of TMATV appeared in The Irish Times (Battersby, 2015) prior to the novel's release. This caused debate in Irish debate about the harm that bad reviews could have on an author's career (Doyle, 2015). Murray has stated that TMATV had a "rockier journey" than his other successful novels, wasn't what readers "wanted from novels" and that after Battersby's review he "didn't want to write a book again" (Shortall, 2023). The critical and commercial response to TMATV reflects the narrative itself, where a bestselling novel does not necessarily represent a well-written novel. Instead, it is a favourable "audited representation of that performance" (Fisher, 2009, p.44) through PR and media coverage. This is similar to derivatives trading at Bank of Torabundo (BOT), a type of financial contract that is based on the value of a physical asset. Claude explains that instead of "selling the asset itself, a derivative allows you to do other kinds of deals based on it" (Murray, 2015, p.41) and that "the market for them is astronomically bigger than the market for actual things" (Murray, 2015, p.42). At BOT, stocks rise and fall based on rumours and speeches, but Claude "[massages the] representations" (Fisher, 2009, p.44) into a compelling story for his clients. BOT has no safe and no money, because they do not take deposits from its customers and use short-term borrowing to fund trades, negating the need for a physical asset like cash. The idea of ownership (in this case, a digital representation of ownership of assets) is the important element. This foils Paul's plans to rob the bank. While it could be possible for Paul to get to a physical asset on the bank's premises, he cannot infiltrate the intangible digital realm.

Paul's other get-rich-quick schemes seem to fail because they are all as preposterous as robbing a bank. The Hotwaitress website, a "comprehensive guide to waitresses in cafés and restaurants all over the city" (Murray, 2015, p. 222), fails to secure investment. However, the characters who can secure investment in this world do not have ideas that are more legitimate than Paul's. Paul attempts to persuade investors that his ideas are realistic when instead he should abandon reality. This is the key to BOT's CEO Blankly's success. He has tanked multiple businesses and lacks any qualifications. Hired by BOT because he has made "unthinkable profits" by "turning reality into a fruit machine" (Murray, 2015, pp. 66-68), Blankly represents the zenith of investment banking. He creates "numbers that look extraordinary and bear little resemblance to economic conditions on the ground" (McGlynn, 2022, p.5). When Paul lies about writing a new novel to his old editor out of embarrassment only for the editor to offer an advance, he turns it down. Unlike Blankly, Paul cannot fathom conjuring money out of thin air, from an idea, telling Claude that the editor will not actually "pay big money for a novel I just made up" (Murray, 2015, p. 355). This is in contrast with Blankly, who sees the fact that BOT "is still affected by global events, instead of setting its own agenda" (Murray, 2015, p.193) as a barrier to profit.

Capitalism's manipulations of reality are depicted when Paul reflects how during the boom he "could get half a million from the bank for an apartment that didn't exist yet" (Murray, 2015, p.165). Once built, the apartment is a facade of luxury. The tap in the Jacuzzi gushes brown water and the radiators don't work. The family is "living in a giant metaphor" (Murray, 2015, p.166), the only residents in the crumbling building and trapped in negative equity. The schism between reality and representation widens further at BOT. A report Claude writes for the Irish government is altered to advise that another bank can return to profitability and should be bailed out. The government repeats this on Irish national news and gives the bank another bailout, even though the bank will still collapse. Claude's colleague, Howie, is running a new investment fund that uses "crazy paradoxical rocket-science shit" (Murray, 2015, p.101) to achieve soaring profits. They have created a mathematical formula where "the losses don't register" (Murray, 2015, p.286). Claude cannot understand this, because in the real world you can't just command something to no longer exist. Howie tells Claude that he is too cautious: "they're numbers. They're not real. You can make them do what you want" (Murray, 2015, p.287). Howie's job is no longer about managing a fund that trades profitably, but managing a fund that appears to trade profitably. In other words, Howie's "work becomes geared towards the generation and massaging of representations rather than to the official goals of the work itself" (Fisher, 2009, p.46). Howie later tells Claude about his naive attempt to tell the truth when he was starting out. For his final year university project, he was given access to the performance-to-salary ratios of a bank in London. Just as "the movement of a company ’ s stock price does not directly affect the amount of money the company has" (Haskel and Westlake, 2017 p.169), he found that a trader's salary did not directly affect the amount of successful deals a trader brokered. He expected that revealing the trading industry was a sham to the bank's Chief Financial Officer would shake up the system irrevocably. Instead, after graduation, Howie discovered that he had been blacklisted by all the banks in London.

As Flannery (2022) notes, the irrational demand from investors that future profits be predicted is satiated by the construction of a story. Skilled traders were a necessary component to the construction of this story and revealing that profitability was a result of pure luck was unacceptable. Therefore, Howie was pushed out. Similarly, in 2025 TMATV was reprinted. Expecting sales comparable to 2023's bestseller The Bee Sting would be an irrational demand due to the 2015 reception, so sales goals had to be satiated with the construction of a story. The new paratext presents Murray as a bestselling author and award winner, signalling a purchase from a prestigious author that will signal the consumer's intellectual identity. The cover includes a quote attributed to The Irish Times which is not pulled from Battersby's review. Calling TMATV "utterly original and very funny", the quote is from Blue sky thinking: books to pack this summer (Carey, 2015). This is not a comprehensive review of TMATV, but instead a list of twenty-five novels with a few sentences per novel about why it is a good holiday read. The PR presentation of Murray is that he is a commercially and critically successful author, and such an author would be praised by a prominent publication in their country. As Battersby passed away in 2018, there was no risk that she would correct the record and reality was simply altered to align with the PR. Similarly, Howie was able to find work in Dublin's IFSC and decided to sell the stories people were willing to pay for. He deals in fairy tales about brilliant CEOs who will turn companies around and clever analysts who can predict how the markets will move. "If it's a choice between a difficult truth and a simple lie, people will take the lie every time. Even if it kills them" (Murray, 2015, p.365). For Fisher, success in late capitalism lies in the ability to understand and convey meaning. Capitalism is predicated on "a complex series of social semiotic signals" that must be interpreted without "a final authority which can offer the definitive official version" (Fisher, 2009, p.52). TMATV and the PR presentation of Murray, however, show that capitalism is now predicated on broadcasting an official version of reality. It does not matter if the broadcast is incompatible with the truth.

For Fisher, post-Fordist bureaucracy and PR fuse into audit culture, and this has devastating effects on working conditions. Worse, much like capitalism, ending audit culture seems impossible. "Managers have frequently suggested there is no alternative (TINA) and have perhaps suggested that what we need to do is ‘ work smarter, not harder ’ " (Fisher, 2009, p.54). Fisher describes bureaucrats as only following decisions already made, which we can translate into the language of capitalist storytelling. Workers are required to act and report in a way that satisfies irrational demands of profits or productivity that will increase in the future. A new edition of a novel will be commercially and critically successful because history is rewritten to make it seem like the novel has always has been successful. A fund will be profitable because the rules of mathematics have been rewritten so the losses don't register. All reporting that relates to these capitalist stories must reflect the irrational narrative, placing people into plots that do not align with their reality. Sometimes people are placed in concurrent plots that converge and clash under audit culture, which in the right circumstances can allow someone to briefly escape capitalism's official broadcast of reality. We see this play out in TMATV when a Parisian trader embezzles millions of euros. He was able to do this because he had started his career in the back office and knew all the security codes, so he would sneak in at night and submit forged paperwork. BOT's Compliance Department are on high alert because of this scandal, even though it happened in a different bank in a different country. Any risks to future profit must be mitigated to satisfy investor demand. Merely explaining that the same embezzlement scenario could not happen at BOT will not be a satisfying narrative. Instead, BOT must be able to tell a story of an in-depth investigation and audit that comprehensively proves that there is no risk at BOT. Claude is flagged for surveillance because he is also a French trader who began his career in the back office. This is illogical because he would not be able to embezzle from BOT, because he worked in the back office of a different bank, so does not have BOT's back office codes. The similarities are superficial, so it does not make sense to place Claude under surveillance. However, because ending audit culture is impossible (Fisher, 2009, p.54), Claude is a satisfying narrative instrument for the story that the Compliance Department needs to tell. Before this narrative can complete its run, BOT is targeted by short-sellers. Within a few days, BOT is going under. When it becomes clear that the bank won't survive, the bankers all go to drown their sorrows in the local pub. The capitalist story as a whole requires that banks survive, however, and so a bailout package from the Irish government comes through in the early hours of the morning. Walking home after the announcement, Claude passes the BOT building and discovers that in the chaos of their departure, no one thought to lock the door. Claude enters and finds the stack of cheques that he had not yet invested because it seemed pointless when the bank was facing insolvency. Impulsively, Claude decides to continue his role as a narrative instrument, the French banker who could potentially embezzle the bank unless investigated and deemed not to be a risk. Claude fulfils his role of embezzling the bank because the investigation was abandoned before Claude was given a new role of someone who was incapable of embezzlement. He anonymously distributes the millions among his loved ones, which includes posing as an investment company to buy Paul's crumbling home in cash. Finally freed from his oppressive financial narrative, Paul signs a deal with his old editor to write the novel he previously pretended he was writing. He is no longer trapped in a story where he is an unsuccessful author desperate for money, instead becoming a writer who made a lucrative property investment which gives him time to write. This allows for the creation of a new narrative, where Paul's brilliant idea for a novel is snapped up before he even writes it. In this narrative, he is already successful, and the representation of that success promises future profit for the publisher.

In the closing pages of TMATV , BOT resumes their narrative of compliance. They are about to discover that Claude is an embezzling French banker. However, his colleague, Ish, has also been placed in multiple concurrent narratives. Her job is at risk after raising ethical concerns because of "hidden expectations behind official standards" (Fisher, 2009, p.43). Despite the fact that she performs her duties adequately, she fails to put profit above everything else. The BOT narrative is that its workers relentlessly pursue profit, so Ish must either stop advocating for ethics over profit or be fired for failing to meet hidden expectations. Ish was also placed in the narrative where BOT staff were required to tell the Irish government to proceed with a bank bailout, concealing the risks a bailout posed to the Irish economy because a positive financial outlook could lead to future profit. BOT failed to ensure that Ish either abandoned her ethics or lost her job to set an example to other workers. Ish continues to fulfil her role as a worker that compromises BOT's profits with her ethics and leaks the original report which advises against the bank bailout to the Irish press. It will now be impossible to alter reality in a way that makes bailing out BOT seem like something the Irish government can do. In the intangible economy, the narrative is the asset. BOT can disappear because without the narrative that it is a good and responsible bank, BOT is worthless. When the bank disappears, Claude's crime also disappears.

Despite the banking industry's reckless behaviour in causing the 2008 financial crisis, they were bailed out. It was simply impossible to imagine them collapsing, even though bailouts would cause devastating financial harm to Irish people like Paul. Reality needed to be rearranged in order to allow the perpetrator of the financial crisis to be saved, and so the individual financial narratives of personal irresponsibility were enforced instead. Fisher recognised the importance of stories in representing a better version of reality, but the limitation of his work when applying it to post-crash financial narratives is that representations of assets do not fuel profits anymore. The representation has become the asset. Capitalism can still function on stories that argue that there is no alternative to capitalism, but TMATV shows that we can imagine new possibilities when assets are ideas. Past authorial failure can be rewritten with the promise of future commercial success. A big bank can be toppled because audit culture gave a banker the idea that they could embezzle the bank. It might be impossible to imagine a world without banks, but it's perfectly possible to let one bank collapse once it is revealed that there is nothing solid behind the PR.

References

Battersby, E. (2015, July 11) The Mark and the Void, by Paul Murray | Review. The Irish Times. https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-mark-and-the-void-by-paul-murray-review-1.2277627

Carey, A. (2015, June 20) Blue sky thinking: books to pack this summer. The Irish Times. Retrieved 10 November, 2025. https://web.archive.org/web/20221107033403/https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/blue-sky-thinking-books-to-pack-this-summer-1.2255893?utm_content=buffere528c&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Doyle, M. (2015, July 16) Reviewing Irish books: the good, the bad and the ugly truth. The Irish Times. https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/reviewing-irish-books-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-truth-1.2287224

Fisher, M. (2009). Capitalist realism : is there no alternative? John Hunt Publishing Limited.

Flannery, E. (2022). Form, affect and debt in post-Celtic Tiger Irish fiction : Ireland in crisis. Bloomsbury Academic.

Haskel, J., & Westlake, S. (2017). Capitalism without Capital : The Rise of the Intangible Economy. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400888320

Liu, M. (2015, July 16) The Mark and the Void by Paul Murray, book review: The banker as everyman. The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-mark-and-the-void-by-paul-murray-book-review-the-banker-as-everyman-10393586.html

McGlynn, M. M. (2022). Broken Irelands : literary form in post-crash Irish fiction (First edition.) Syracuse University Press.

Murray, P. (2016). The Mark and the Void. Penguin Books.

Sheehan, J. (2015, October 22) 'The Mark And The Void' Is Good Fun — Until It Isn't. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2015/10/22/448977120/the-mark-and-the-void-is-good-fun-until-it-isnt

Shortall, E. (2023, November 25) Paul Murray on why he almost gave up writing: ‘ There was no escape... It felt like I had been shamed ’ Irish Independent. https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/paul-murray-on-why-he-almost-gave-up-writing-there-was-no-escape-it-felt-like-i-had-been-shamed/a1620969644.html