Tono-Bungay!

If we build it, we will trash it. The recently redone track bed at the 4th Avenue F & G station.

I recently read H.G. Wells’ novel Tono-Bungay (1909). It is named for a product that makes the protagonist and his uncle a fortune. The stuff is “mediated water,” pure bunkum, of course, a patent medicine fraud, but it is well-advertised and sells wildly. In fact, it’s actually kind of poisonous; the marketers soon move on to many other products, ultimately building up to an enormous fortune and a perilous crash because their empire is built on funny numbers. (Yes, it does sound all too familiar.) The book is a satire — sometimes long-winded, Wells being quite the tract-master — on Edwardian England, empire, and capitalism. But it still reads true: Tono-Bungay fills our market shelves, only under other names, many other names.

Consumption, once a disease — the root of the word means burning up inside — always a disease.