AtD-related? "the abstraction of non-imperial art"

[alice wellintown]

Swift's non-fiction prose, unlike Pynchon's non-fiction prose, is
lucid, clear, logical,  yet it is like Pynchon's prose fiction,
beguiling and shocking in its propositions which are most often driven
home by distinct, startling, even shocking,  imagery. Like Pynchon,
Swift stands on principles (Christian Humanism) when he lashes out at
what he views as the harmful abuses of cranks and extremists. Iin both
men, applying, losely, the antique characterization of Swift as
Christian Humanist again, the dogma of Deists and Puritans are
satirized, and both also take on the irreligious, the arrogance of
atheists and high priests.  Both are humanitarians who satirize those
who perpetuate and sustain injustice and suffering. Both also despair,
though neither is a misanthropist, of the inexhaustable capicity of
humans to de-humanize others and lay waste the gifts of scatterbrained
mother nature, and both make brilliant use of the ironies of free will
and expose the heartlessness of humans, the futility of scholarship,
the stupidity of man & Co.