Mark William’s Reviews > Women and Men > Status Update

McElroy's just posted online the first chapter of his new book. 90 years old. I can't complain that he didn't give me enough time to finish this book... My refractory effort is compounded by the book length being1293 pages, not 1192....

"... a quantitative change builds up and bursts into qualitative... the evolution and obstacle quest of the spirit..." This captures the entire book for me.

This is an unintended slow read. Each page has been read 2/3/4/5 times. This is a pace I would usually criticize. Here however, I've found my evolving sense of the book subtly emulating the structure of the novel itself, as per the above quote. Likewise, I feel akin to Jim with his strange sense of time. Each passage reread evokes memories of various orders. Highly satisfying.

"Newly confused about her tales, their exact date of inspiration, their pretty weird anatomy, their topography that changed like the weather, their hinted nature of foretelling..."

McElroy notes, "In the writing of this book I have meditated often upon 'Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered', by E.F. Schumacher and more particularly upon his phrase "an articulated structure that can cope with the multiplicity of small-scale units."

"...If it cannot get beyond all this and make contact with the human realities of poverty, frustration, alienation, despair, breakdown, crime, escapism, stress, congestion, ugliness. and spiritual death, then let us scrap economics and start afresh.: E.F. Schumacher 'Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered

"... If economic thinking cannot grasp this it is useless. If it cannot get beyond its vast abstractions, the national income, the rate of growth, capital/output ratio, input-output analysis, labour mobility, capital accumulation;.."

Important reference, "What is the meaning of democracy, freedom, human dignity. standard of living, self-realisation, fulfilment? Is it a matter of goods, or of people? Of course it is a matter of people. But people can be themselves only in small comprehensible groups. Therefore we must learn to think in terms of an articulated structure that can cope with a multiplicity of small-scale units...

Relatively easy opening Division of Labour was stunning. Put a lot of effort into the first Breather, reading back and forth, this bit, that bit, at least five times through. Well worth it. Subsequent Mayn and Kimball predominant chapters flew by so sweetly. McElroy is a master. He tackles absolutely everything with the most phenomenal precision I've ever encountered. About 1000 sure to be exhilarating pages to go.