[...] when the American winning streak had met another of its periodic, catastrophic ends--busts for a culture that seemed not so much expectant of constant boom as utterly dependent on it. [...]
[...] the open-ended, state-run lottery is a salutary vision: in losing week after week, Lenore is actually paying into a civic fund that is not unlike taxes, a fund of commonwealth that the young Wallace tentatively steps toward here. Many U.S. lotteries have historically been legally set up to su…
N.R.K., Keller's initials, together sound like "anarchy", and this order that philosophy might bring to this nervous boy should allow him to grow up, or somehow rise (keller is German for basement).
The Stonecipheco minion Neil Obstat Jr., meanwhile, is named for the phrase of papal censorship, nihil obstat ("nothing hinders"), in a corollary to legalistic control over language.
Rick's R.V. initials [...] translate to random variable in mathematical parlance, whereas Lenore often has the qualities of a constant.
