Sorry Jeff (and OMB)-- this idea just doesn't make any sense for two reasons: 1) We are talking about fictional characters (and thus speculation may be intriguing but makes no particular sense from a literary point of view; 2) Moist is a fun character, who grows and develops in the two books (he's a troubleshooter who gets bored once things are running smoothly). I found him much less satisfactory in MM--but then I found the whole book very unsatisfactory.
And Jeff, your statement, "
Moist doesn't need to cowtow to the aristocracy--the dying old money of the city who are rapidly becoming obselete--because he can win the hearts of the growing middle class in AM--the craftsmen, businessmen, technologies, and Dibblers of the world who will move the city forward," is totally unsupported by anything in the AM novels. What growing middle-class??? And there are still big money people who keep the banks from failing and keep the damage done by Reacher & Co's embezzlement etc. from causing a financial crisis. They act rather like the Fed. Reserve and the Congress with the TARP payments. But nothing of that seems to have trickled down in the real world, and it is unlikely to do so in AM
statement about AM not having a middle class (Hello, Harry King, William De Worde & The Times, Madame and Pepe, Ironcrust, Gimlet, etc.), but now that I see that Making Money is the topic for next month's discussion, I will hold off until then.
