....When Brehgert proposes to a young Englishwoman who’s overestimated her own worth for too many years to be picky, the reaction is nearly universal horror, but she’s more pragmatic: as long as the man is rich, why should anyone care about his religion? Greed can be the leading wedge of freedom.
Something similar is true of the glittering capital of an American empire perched on a speculative bubble. There’s no limit to the money accumulating at the top of New York (and other centers of wealth), no limit to the fascination it exercises over the rest of the country. Every time it seems as if the tide of fantastic wealth is going out—after 2008 was the most recent moment—it surges back, higher than ever. Greed is eternal, but when the money flows as plentifully upward as in London circa 1873 or New York circa 2013, and is as unequally distributed, it becomes a moral toxin, saturates the world of culture, makes relationships more competitive, turns desire into the pursuit of status, replaces solid things with mirages.
Finished The Unwinding, which was pretty fucking awesome (yeah, I didn't like how he wrote about Oprah or Alice Waters, and there aren't enough female characters in the "unknown" profiles either -- on the other hand, his portrayal of Tammy Thomas, being as resolutely heroic as three firemen just "doing what she needed to do," repeatedly made me cry); zapped over to Amazon, yes please do deliver some bits (bytes?) to my Paperwhite for under $10, now immediately on to Interesting Times. Brave new library. This is what I do instead of watching TV (it's also now what I do instead of updating GoodReads. Hi ho).
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*Trying to de-Gawkerize/un-Awlify my online style, bear with me.