June 9, 2008
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I can’t think of a modern equivalent for the directness of the philosophical message of Voltaire’s Candide, though its comedic romp-sensibility, I’m sure, has many parallels through to the present. My short memory syndrome is surely brought on by a nostalgia for the art of fictional polemic, of which this little book is a pithy example. Hey, when a story has ‘a tall Bulgarian’ and an old woman with one buttock as characters, I’m there. The fact that the adventure story pizzazz is the topping on an Enlightenment theory of happiness-cake, well, that’s just the Bart Simpson toy in my packet of Froot Loops.
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