A hologram for a venture capitalist

I am interested in any narrative, be it fictional, non-fictional, that portrays the makers and shapers, as it were, of the era that we call "contemporary".

Who are they?

In Greg Jackson's riveting story, Wagner in the Desert, "they" are the "We's", thirty-something men and women, cosmopolitans in their diet, eclectic in their ways of being (i.e. highly transnational, trans-identitarian even), urbane and privileged, in a most 21st century way, in that "they" are not born into wealth, but inveigle themselves into the owners of wealth by being sycophantic "courtiers" in the courts of the new rich class, the venture capitalists.

The narrator compares himself and his friends, vacationing in Palm Springs, California, as Voltaires in the court of Frederick the Great. The story's "Frederick" is one Wagner, who is a billionaire financier, a benevolent despot of our times; in other words, an "angel".

Jackson's says, in an interview about the social and ideological context in which Wagner is set, that though we live in a democracy, we secretly lust for monarchy:

We live in a political era, meanwhile, that saw two families pass the Presidency back and forth for twenty years and that may well see those two families vie again for the Presidency in 2016 [...] the appeal and threat of monarchy are very much alive. And this can only be a failure of democracy. The idea of unilateral leadership—enlightened despotism, benevolent dictatorship, the noblesse oblige of “Downton Abbey” and its spinoffs—appeals to us when collective action seems impossible. We turn to the spectacle of British royal weddings and births, which should be anathema to our civic imagination, because … well, for a number of reasons, surely. But among them, I think, is a kind of relief at the idea of distinction independent of achievement. Achievement is difficult, unstable, ephemeral, often tainted by unacknowledged luck. It is also, always, comparative: measured against other people’s relative lack of achievement or outright failure. Royal distinction, on the other hand, is accorded by birth, isn’t subject to the whims of fortune, and appears to be an end in itself. There is something perversely honest in this, when so much “meritocratic” achievement is just the opposite.

The collective "we" of the story would do anything to please Wagner; they are born to be courtiers. They don't belong to the traditional professions, but to the "arts":

We were a particular sort of modern hustler: filmmakers and writers (screen, web, magazine), who periodically worked as narrative consultants on ad campaigns, sustainability experts, P.R. lifers, designers or design consultants, social entrepreneurs, and that strange species of human beings who has invented an app [...] We listened to U2 and Morrissey and Kyle Minogue, post-ironically, which is to say, exactly, sincerely. We donated to charity, served on the boards for not-for-profits, and shepherded socially responsible enterprises for work. We thought we were not bad people. Not the best, a bit spoiled, maybe, but pleasant, insouciant, decent. We paid a tax on the lives we lived, in order to say in public, I have sacrificed, tithed, given back. A system of pre-Lutheran indulgences. Of carbon offsets. A green-washing of our sins. We were affiliated. We had access.
Wagner in the Desert gives the reader a feeling of unease about the generation in whose custody the well-being of the earth itself has been reposited. The generation who produce nothing substantial but are beholden to the task of monetizing their talents by selling their services to those who invest in tertiary services, is also the generation who have taken up the cudgel of preservation. Have we given over the most sombre of responsibilities to the most flakiest then?

Jackson raises the antennae of discomfort in our minds as we read of these fellows, desperately wanting to be good stewards and simultaneously experiencing revulsion at the thought of the dull life of responsibility that entails. One way to transcend the conflict is drugs. 

After a week-long immersion in drugs and mindless sex, the group is poised to return to their adult lives, and the narrator reflects thus:

We ate the last caps and stems of the mushrooms. We were high, but we weren't courting death. We were just some nobody hustlers in the desert, trying to make a film, trying to read a poem and be present together and save the shards of hearts splintered many times in incautious romance from further communion, trying to keep up with our Instagram and Twitter feeds and all the autodocumentary imperatives of the age [...] We were not heroes. We were trying ways not to be villains.

 They don't get the funding from Wagner. The new age courtiers, we are led to believe, would have to grit their teeth and settle in to a life of endless sycophancy, just to develop an app, to get a film on some obscure economist, get produced, or an installation art project get off the ground and find place in a "prestigious" show.