There is a Persian word, estisal , that Nahid Siamdoust turns over in the New York Review of Books this week. Loosely translated, it means “having no options” — a helplessness so complete that it starts making choices on your behalf. It was out of estisal, she writes, that some Iranians chose war, and the same condition, she contends, is what has left others open to the disinformation spread by state and private media alike. English needs a paragraph for that. Persian has a word.
Once you have the word, you start seeing the condition everywhere — including across a week of book news that, read together, is mostly about what people reach for when the exits narrow.
The Marginalian spent the week with Mary Shelley — not the Shelley of Frankenstein but the one who wrote The Last Man , and who left behind a line that reads less like consolation than like a work order: “There is but one solution to the intricate riddle of life; to improve ourselves, and contribute to the happiness of others.”