El picaro' (Was: Boring holes)

[Gillies, Lindsay]

Heikki writes:
>Something was in the air in Spain, a bit the same way as in the U.S. in
>the 1970s, when _GR_, _JR_, and _The Public Burning_ came out in short
>intervals.

Perhaps the picaresque tale is a sort of literary Xray of the empire (Spain 
in the late 1500's, Amerika post WW2)---both in terms of paranoia and of the 
misinterpretation of reality.  (While Quixote is never paranoid, he might as 
well be, for all the people sniggering at him behind his back.)  While the 
Presidents and Generals assume (some of them, anyway) that Everything is In 
Control, in reality they are stumbling around, bumping into objects they 
don't understand in darkness they don't recognize as such.