For the crime of questioning the State’s hunts in public, huntman David Black is sentenced
to become the quarry in a three-day hunt in the past—the 20th century in this case.
My
own student, David Black, who died unexpectedly in the summer of 2006, would always talk with
me about anything and everything. So if he were still alive as I read this (in 2015), we
would have a happy afternoon reading it and talking about the social situation the story
brings up, or maybe we’d figure out why I’m so attracted to one-against-the-system
stories.
You’re much better off than if we had held the hunt in Sixteenth Century Spain during
the inquisition or perhaps ancient Rome during the reign of Caligula. You may even like
it here during the brief period of the hunt. It’s a fairly civilized culture, at least
in a material sense.