Pages turned

It was a rather productive morning, I was able to devote sufficent time to read two more chapters of T.R. Reid's United States of Europe, which I find fascinating but hardly scholarly. That said, this continental craze towards soemthing egalitarian, venerative and progressive is quite the tonic for a December morning in a red state.

The text was something I wouldn't have broached on my own; it selection is atestament to the myriad nature of a group started by firends of mine. Thus many doors I would've otherwise missed in my own crusade through fiction have been propped open and I have gained in spades. That said, there parallels between the Reid text and volume titled Voltaire's Bastards which the group devoured early last summer. The shared thesis being that a classic or domestic approach to a system or problem may not be of benefit. Indeed, the Bastards text is suspsicious that sytems themselves, in our present technocracy, may be the culprit. As the research librarian in the Gold Bug Variations, ponders: we are drowing in data and losing a palpable graps of the organic and important.

One could infer that an anthema of the super-structure (the image of Robert McNamera looming ominously) is likewise rise in fanataicism; that somehow the rise of the Evangelical and suicide bombers will sweep away the sterility of our spreadsheets: a new Jerusalem of thoughtless consumption and omnipresent wal-mart bags.