A Short History of the Same Place

It is 1979. The author travels (and takes the reader) by rail, boat, bus, rental car, bicycle, and Shanks’s pony up the East Coast from Washington to Maine, ＂going from here to there, to see＂ what in thirty years has changed in the land, the landscape, the society. He reflects on history, he dreams, he digresses untethered and, ＂perhaps to delay＂ his own painful progress, he interpolates passages from the high-satirical Caldoon Wars, chronicle of Operation Mollycoddle, a U.S. military action to rein in a secessionist Maine and, as though in passing, to destroy Caldoon himself. The passing of another thirty years has not dulled the author’s critical vision. After all, we still confront ＂ ... a future without freedom ... where the repressed seek more repression ... a direct route to torture chambers and random terror, the return of religion, barbarity...＂