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deus ex machina is not an unreasonable expectation for folk who believe that markets are guided by an "invisible hand"---the distance between adam-smith metaphysics and a god is pretty small. so personally, i think ace referenced 1893 mostly because it is a reassuring parable concerning the past, which is reassuring in the way most such are, in that by the time the story was written, the outcomes were already in place.
contingency is scary. the present is scary. chances have to be taken without any assurance that elements x y or z will produce the desired outcomes.
most of what i read from ace is conditioned by an aversion to the present, and this not at the level of not supporting obama, but more at the level of not being able to cope with the fact of contingency, or open-endedness. it's a central appeal of most metaphysics, this emptying out of the present, replacing it with a transcendent frame that contains it yadda yadda yadda.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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