In a world criss-crossed by the most complex and far-reaching financial networks and overrun by a rich foliage of media and information flows, spy and conspiracy narratives like Creation Lake allow us to inhabit a vantage point whose cool detachment is paradoxically invigorating: x-ray vision that looks through Europe into the ghostly skeleton of a “borderless network of supply and transport” underneath. Otherwise banal social facts—poor immigrants’ music habits, discounts at Carrefour—become pieces of data for sorting, dissection, and analysis. No sooner is some tantalizing piece of unmapped social terrain glimpsed (“The only mystery…”) than it’s cancelled in the bracing cold water of reason (“…but even that isn’t so hard to imagine”).

I actually read this book a while back, but with the new year I thought I should do a better job promoting my cultural criticism blog, so if you liked this excerpt feel free to read my full review of this book and subscribe if you feel like it.