“Wallis’s seagoing vessels are at the mercy of the waves. … They toss, swerve about, and plunge more than enough to bring a gulp to the throat.” So Michael Glover writes of maritime artist Alfred Wallis in this weekend’s issue. 

These words could describe the instability that has become a daily condition, and has caught in its tide both democracy and lives. They evoke Melville’s remark in Moby Dick: “Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be lost in its unshared, harborless immensities.”

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