What stunned my class most about the book was the casual attitude the characters had toward slavery. I mean, how could they not know that slavery was an evil? Nothing could have been more clear to us, nothing. Slavery was pretty much the most evil thing we could think of, and it was mind-blowing to imagine that this wasn’t vividly reflected in the experience of our ancestors.

And so we figured that people back then must have been hateful and stupid monsters, willfully acting in their own best interests at the cost of others. And so we judged everybody in the book, imagining ourselves morally superior to the louts, trolls and insane people who populated the past.

But this didn’t make any sense.

There was absolutely no reason for me to think I had a more finely developed sense of morality than anybody who came before me. There must have been some decent people who participated in slavery and had no idea that what they were doing was wrong, no? They were simply living in the world into which they were born, and to them slavery, like the weather or landscape, was an unexamined fact of life rather than a conscious act of moral will.

This seemed clear to me. I was not unique. I was like everybody else, and that, of course, is a very scary thing to admit to oneself.

Technology has accelerated and amplified our culture in ways that are inconceivable.  Every year it seems that the world has changed more than in all the previous millennia stacked before it. It’s dislocating, and I often think of technology, in particular our online lives, as an emergent dimension we don’t yet understand or know how to interact with. Whenever we’re uncomfortable or bored with our physical lives, however briefly, a smart phone serves as a magic wand we can wave to take us to this other realm, and put in that context, none of us should be surprised to find discontent, even anger there.

Our desire for social justice has far outstripped our ability to deliver it, and in many ways I see ideological conflicts as dimensional clashes rather than moral ones. By the standards of today, so much of what we as a society did just ten years ago seems appalling, but as we judge it’s worth remembering that ten years ago we had no idea what we were doing was wrong or unfair. We were just operating within the framework of time and place. So how then to police this if every generation, indeed, every person, is going to be witlessly complicit in ghastly acts ?

Of course, revolution is not about justice, it’s about change.

And as the future and the past battle for supremacy in a ruined present, it seems that the only way it can end, the only way it has always ended, is like in a Shakespearean tragedy—everybody on stage dies, and then, the world purified and laid bare, is seized by those, now done with watching, who had been waiting in the wings.

Upstairs at the bar there’s an unrelenting press of people. So many of them. Jostling together excitedly, they’re all hopeful on this festive night out, each one wanting to feel special in some regard, each one waiting for their life to pivot. Unshaven Bros in sports toques and ball caps, beta predators who only move in packs of two and threes, are looking over at a cluster of Friday night women worrying their phones. Men are pushed up against the bar three deep, each one competing for something.

The bartender is at the centre of it all.

Although completely overwhelmed, she’s working calmly through the chaos. Surrounded on all sides by some sort of want, she makes a millions subtle calculations with each one of her actions. Each person is a problem that must be solved, a fire that must be extinguished. Her face determined, she moves fluidly and with purpose, and all the men encircling her at the bar with their steaks and Keg-sized glasses of red wine, are watching.

A man around 60 leans in. Everyone is leaning in, trying to flag her attention. This man, he’s lived his life handsome, and the confident residue of that lingers within him still, “Can I be next?” he asks in a salesman’s voice. The bartender forces a smile and takes his order, and all the other men waiting stiffen a little, jealous.

He is pleased with himself, this man. He feels special.

When she returns, he leans in yet further, “That tattoo on your right forearm, the roman numerals, are they from your favourite Shakespeare passage? Are you an actress?”

It is not clear that she is flattered by this attention, but she gives a partial, evasive answer.

“It’s a date,” she says, giving the man a polite, discouraging smile. Gesturing to how busy she is, she moves to disengage and tend to other preening, signalling men, but this man was not finished. “This is my favourite passage,” he began, and then in his best Shakespearian accent:

“If music be the food of love, play on.

Give me excess of it that, surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken, and so die…”

And she is trapped, so trapped she is almost suspended in air.

Her eyes close for just a moment, as if it is all too much, and then she reanimates herself and begins to applaud robustly, cutting the man’s recitation short. It was as if a battle had been won, and she got to keep the secret of the tattoo– something so important, so crucial to who she wanted to be, that she had it written into her flesh–for herself.

What follows is a partial transcript of our final interview:

Pointy Headed man wearing a bowtie: Cressida, that’s a beautiful blouse you’re wearing!

Pale woman with small teeth: I love it, too! It brings out that beautiful auburn in your hair, Cressie!

Cressida: Oh, thank you both, that’s so sweet, but I have to say I can’t take any credit for it.  It was a gift from Roger Federer for that feature I wrote on him that won the National Magazine Award!

Me: I didn’t know that Roger Federer shopped at Winners.

Cressida: I think you have a toothpaste stain on your shirt, Michael, and your right shoe.

Pointy Headed man wearing a bowtie: So, Cressida, let’s start with you. Although I think we all have a pretty good idea, would you tell us what would you bring to the position of Fiction Editor of the New Yorker?

Cressida: Blahblahblahblahblahblah.

Pointy Headed men wearing a bowtie: Wow. Just wow.

Man wearing a cape: I have to say Michael, that’s a tough act to follow. What about you, how would you respond to the question?

Me: I feel like I’m on the Apprentice.

Pale woman with small teeth: You mean the novel by Ferenc Herczeg? Interesting, please elaborate.

Me: May I excuse myself to get a drink of water please?

Cressida: I think he meant the TV show with Donald Trump and not the great work of Ferenc Herczeg, whom I met and edited in Hungry.

Me: Slut.

Woman who was going for a sexy librarian look but failed big time: Mister Murray?

Me: Please, call me Michael, I’m not all stuck up and pretentious like some people here that might be named Cressida.

Cressida: Excuse me, but I do not take kindly to being called a slut. Even though we’re competing for the same job, it doesn’t mean we can’t be civil. And I was only slutty for that first year at Oxford.

(Much laughter amongst stupid inquisition clique and slut Cressida, followed by long, exclusionary digression about all the universities they attended and all of the common people and dogs that they know.)