I'm not saying all inventions are good. But you notice dangerous inventions are always unnatural inventions. You want an example? I'll give you the best one I know, Cheese spread that you squirt out of an aerosol can onto your sandwich. That's about as low as you can go.

This is a quote from somewhere in the middle of the book. It spoke to me for a number of reasons. To me, invention is one of central themes of the novel. I couldn't agree more that inventions like Cheese Whiz are dangerous. They represent the worst in human nature. It's not even style over substance. It's far worse. It's quality versus ambivalence.

No one who cares about quality would ever eat cheese from a can when they could eat aged cheddar. Yet there is this demand for cheese in a can. I know this because one of my fellow volunteers in Group 69 brought two cans from the States for another volunteer in country. I could possibly understand it if there was no cheese available here and the only way to get was to find some shelf-life neutral variety. But there is cheese here in Samoa. In fact, there is really good cheese from New Zealand.

Where does this tastelessness come from? Why eat at McDonald's when you can get a far superior burger down the street for half the price? Why eat cheese from a can? If we lose repsect for quality, what does that say about us and where we are heading?

It was these questions that sped The Mosquito Coast's protagonist Allie Fox south to Honduras, eventually drove him mad and, in turn, made his family crazy.