A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

Book 6 — 4 stars. Also, rules of civility in 2023.

On the drive from Walnut Creek to Stanford, avoiding toll roads, I often get to the exit off the 680 to Mission Blvd and find a queue of at least fifty cars and trucks waiting to enter the offramp. As any driver knows, there are at least fifty-one choices to make in this situation. At one end is the back of the line. At the other is a high-octane swerve into armpit of exit lane as it starts to cleave to the right, kicking dust into the windshield of the car you just cut in front of, not to mention the forty-nine other cars in line. Or, if your rival counters by tailgating, you might find yourself embarrassingly and dangerously stuck halfway in that triangle strip, your car’s ass sticking out into 70mph traffic, waiting for somebody to let you be an asshole, because certainly the alternative — missing the exit altogether — is unthinkable, inhumane!

We’ve all been that asshole at least once, intentionally or unintentionally. And we’d like to think that our karmic debt can be repaid the next time we arrive at this fifty-car queue by gracefully depositing ourselves at the very back of the line. But we have all also been to our wit’s end with this experience, helplessly watching that fifty-car queue become fifty-one, fifty-two — one-hundred — fifty spaces filled with fifty assholes who can’t possibly have more important places to be than you, who can’t possibly be properly paying their karmic dues like you, the next time around. We’ve all…