ATDTDA (13): Way of the Potato, 372-373

[Paul Nightingale]

Post-Czolgosz, "another cycle of Red Scare delusion": "a place of refuge" is
to be found "out over the sea ." etc. A parallel world, then, "a place
promised to them, not by God, which'd be asking too much of the average
Anarchist, but by certain hidden geometries of History" (373). Following the
description of Barcelona (372): "It was the USA, after all, and fear was in
the air." (373)

And the reference to atheism might be juxtaposed to Flaco's "like finding an
old religion again, one we'd almost forgotten" (372), one of the novel's
repetitions: if worlds run parallel to one another, then so do competing
ideologies of faith/optimism (for want of better descriptors). One might
consider the ambiguity of Marx's 'opium of the people' quote in full:
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless
world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium
of the people."

Furthermore, movements southwards ("Wolfe Tone O'Rooney was headed to
Mexico", 373) or eastwards (". the tramp steamer Despedida, bound for the
Mediterranean") reverse the Go West! motif, a doomed enterprise since
Professor Vanderjuice's speech on 53.