Tropes, Trains, & the Empire’s Veins

letter to a friend

Photo by Skistar, Wikimedia Commons. CC by 3.0.

Rather than recast these rough ideas into a formal article focused on tropes and trains, I’m leaving this letter to a friend, who is conducting an online book club, in its original form, babbling, informal, and intimate. I let the reader fall into the water, splash in medias res, but trust it will be easy to see the upward drift of the bubbles.