"There’s something very wrong in our country…We now see what barely fettered capitalism looks like. We are killing the small and the intimate. We all feel it and we don’t know quite why everything is beginning to look the same…all across our country we are intent on developing chain after chain with no character…We are losing our individuality. Killing the soul of our landscape. Yet we’re supposed to be the most individualistic of countries. I feel the sadness of it every time I go through cities like Fargo and Minneapolis and walk the wonderful old main streets and then go to the edges and wander through acres of concrete boxes. Our country is starting to look like Legoland."
— American writer Loiuse Erdrich’s words resonated particularly loudly after my first visit to IKEA in Melbourne over the weekend. This is from her excellent interview in issue #195 of the Paris Literary Review.
