Sleepwalkers, leave other sleepwalkers alone! - Jonathan Lethem

Apparently Brooklyn needn't always push itself to be something else, something conscious and anxious, something pointed toward Manhattan.... Brooklyn might sometimes also be pleased, as here on Flatbush, to be its grubby, enduring self.

We admit the presence of no author, no oeuvre, and no genre. The text stands bare. . . . We admit nothing outside of the text.

What better way to keep people under your thumb? Make up some big enemy, justify everything as part of the war effort.