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In a moment defined by artificial intelligence, algorithms and the almighty tax break, by middlebrow convention, shareholder protection and Silicon Valley “wisdom,” “Magnolia” now reads not as a miracle but as an impossibility.

This framing device, which has the clunky air of a middlebrow play, provides a convenient if stagy way of breaking down his biography into manageable parts.

I mostly agree, but I also don’t want to create too big a “lowbrow/middlebrow” distinction.

Rooted in a sensibility defiantly opposed to middlebrow sameness, the paper broadened its scope from a specific urban locale to an ethos no longer confined to a set of quizzically arranged blocks below 14th Street.

We learn that Babbitt, citizen of Zenith, “a mid-size, middlebrow city in the middle of America,” is not fat but extremely well fed, with a baby face marked by wrinkles.