Francis Thomas 
SUMMARY Of The Lincoln Highway [EPUB ebook] 
A Novel By Amor Towles

The Lincoln Highway By Amor Towles

Girls was a semi-popular HBO television production that aired from 2012-2017.One episode toward the end of the show’s run had Marnie (one of the ‘Girls’) in a bad spot. As so many do in real life, she was looking to shift the blame for her declining situation to others only for a grizzled, one-time character to tell her something along the lines of ‘I’ve never seen anyone at the pawn shop because of what others did.’

Once again, the writing on Girls was at times very good. The episode mentioned came to mind while reading The Lincoln Highway, the latest novel by mega-bestselling author Amor Towles.

As previously mentioned, Emmett returns from Salina to a farm that is being foreclosed on. He’s understandably terse with Tom Obermeyer, the banker overseeing the foreclosure. Obermeyer expresses great remorse, and makes plain that ‘no bank makes a loan in hopes of foreclosing.’ No, they don’t. Precisely because bank loans don’t have an equity quotient, banks need them to perform. Obermeyer’s line is a corrective of the laughable commentary from the Left back in 2008 that ‘predatory lenders’ essentially forced money on unsuspecting borrowers with no means to pay monies borrowed back. The narrative always vandalized reason, but its ferocious stupidity continues to animate Lefty commentary. To this day they promote what defies common sense; that loan sources quite literally targeted those incapable of paying them back.

While Charles Watson was a failed farmer whose yearly harvests were routinely imperiled by the vagaries of nature, Emmett chose work in the town before Salina; figuratively very far from the farm. Having witnessed his father’s ineptitude that was exacerbated by nature, he chose carpentry work that ‘welcomed the extremes of nature.’ While schizophrenic weather was the enemy of the farmer, and weather extremes potentially bankrupting, these ‘natural forces’ were the friend of carpenters and builders because they ‘slowly but inevitably undermined the integrity of the house.’ So true, but in reading this I found myself wondering what 19th century French political economist Fredric Bastiat would say about Emmett’s assessment. No doubt he would be clear that destructive weather extremes wouldn’t be good for the overall economy, but how would he assess what these extremes meant for the economics of carpenters? The bet here is that he would question Emmett’s logic. Think about it. Imagine if houses were so sturdy as to not have their integrity undermined by weather and use? If so, imagine all the wealth not consumed on repairs, and that would be directed toward investment. Realistically carpenters would have much more work building more houses to reflect demand for same that is always a consequence of production first.