I preferred the days when our elected persons had wild sex romps and came up smiling, or offered state secrets to unfriendly countries on principle. I would even feel better if they killed someone.

This final paragraph utterly spoiled the otherwise pleasant literacy sensations I had been receiving from it. The author was successfully evoking the sensation of shame with great skill. How can it be right to end on such a barbaric and lawless note?

This casual acceptance of human violence seems endemic in the literary world today. Tut tut! Must be getting old, but it left a sour note in my mind, which I did not appreciate.