There’s an astonishing section right in the middle of Vollmann’s “The Rifles” about how the invention of the gun was basically a Faustian bargain that both created and doomed the world as we know it—and it’s told mostly through quotations from books & diaries as things get worse
over the course of several centuries. It’s like “hunting caribou has never been easier!” in 1789 and 100 years later entire families are starving to death because they’ve hunted the forests clean. It’s a profoundly brilliant device, and then he drops it keeps moving.
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