MDMD Subject/Objective Reality/Illusion & Subjunctive

[Thomas Eckhardt]

Glad to see you're still around, Terrance.

A few thoughts off the top of my head: The main reason, I guess, that
everybody likes this paragraph (me too! me too!) is its suggestiveness.
History, historiography aka the various ways we can make sense of the past,
legends and stories about the New Eden in the West, allusions to literature
(Shakespeare, Joyce) - all find together effortlessly in a passage that
unashamedly addresses the big issues and which I find marvellously well
constructed (in other words, that final ", and our Despair" just knocks me
off my feet). Is this about the American Dream as a prolongation of the
European Dream which had long turned into a nightmare? Are we, in M&D,
watching the American Dream turning into a nightmare, too? Is it about the
eternal nightmare of history or only about the politics of the day? Aren't
the two the same? Isn't there a paradox implied in the passage: Is the
essence of the dream to destroy the dream? Or is this just an unwanted
consequence?

It is beautiful prose, isn't it?

Thomas, in a hurry