Hey Mat, A friend (you know who you are) recently turned me on to Gaddis' _JR_. [It's difficult, but (so far) interesting.] If your student doesn't want something quite so formally experimental, he might try Richard Powers' _Gain_ (which is really great); Paul Erdman wrote dimestore econ novels in the 70's--the most well known is _The Crash of '79_. And, of course, there's always _Bonfire of the Vanities_. If you want early in the century, you could do worse than Frank Norris' _The Pit_ and _The Octopus_. I also think it might be interesting to compare these to the non-fiction narrative of Michael Lewis, who is a pretty fair storyteller.
Christian
