Hemingway

Almost Biblical in its language, Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wilds while reminiscent (in tone and theme), in some parts, of Hemingway, and in others, of Cormac McCarthy, is an altogether original piece of fiction that can be read at multiple levels. Despite much of the slim volume’s pages featuring just one character, it is, at one level, about people and society. But at another, it is about man (a woman, in this case) and the wild, and the interactions between the two – about how one interacts with and shapes the other.…

Hemingway’s phrase always had a broad appeal. It anticipated some aspects of complex systems theory, popularized as the Tipping Point. Remember when we once thought that MySpace, beneficiary of a network effect in the mid-aughts, seemed unassailable? It lost ground to Facebook, gradually and then suddenly. (Maybe Mark Zuckerberg should think twice before he deprioritizes personal ties on Facebook in his pursuit of TikTok, creating an opportunity for a competitor to address the company’s original focus on friends and…