I Will Set this System Aflame

The Riddle of Luigi Mangione's Substack title and handle

UPDATE: Please check out my update to this post here.

In the last of my trio of posts examining some of the literary works that seemed to have been impactful to the alleged CEO shooter Luigi Mangione, I am going to be a bit more speculative, a little less analytical. That’s because the piece in question is short, it’s a poem, and it may or may not be connected to Mangione (though of course I feel the information we do have is suggestive that it is, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this post).

Just a reminder that the reason for this analysis of literary “clues” is to try to get a handle on what Mangione’s state of mind was like in the months leading up to December 4th (he is, of course, only alleged to be the CEO shooter and has not even had an evidentiary hearing). So far we’ve seen that Brave New World and The Lorax were particularly resonant for him, suggesting a horror of what he saw as an emerging “World State” of anesthetizing distractions and pleasures and an ensuing lack of cu…