As part of my not working on Saturdays program, I have instituted a proscription on all financial readings, which implied that this past Saturday I really shouldn't read my main current book, which tells the story of Steve Cohen of SAC Capital. So instead I took up the second of the three Maigret novels I had checked out from the library, the 1940 Maigret in Holland.
At the highest level, reading the Maigret novels really drives home how much change the last century has wrought in Europe. In this novel Maigret travels to Delfzijl in Northern Holland, where a Frenchman has been accused of murder. It is a primitive, basic place, where everyone clops about in sabots (wooden clogs -- the throwing of which into machines during the Industrial Revolution gave us the term saboteur) and eats very limited, traditional menus and drinks beer and schnappes. It is, in short, a very limited and elemental world.
Of course, it's no different than most places in America or anywhere outside of the great capitals. A ton has changed in the world very quickly. We just forget it very easily.
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