"As he travelled, Hirschman filled his notebooks with petites idees, insights he accumulated along the way: observe, infer, compare, generalize, and then check these generalizations against new observations--and where possible, aphorize. There was a thread in all this: tracing the hidden, unexpected, and sometimes surprisingly positive effects of projects often missed in cost-benefit calculus." IN 1968, ON SABBATICAL at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Palo Alto, Hirschman wrote the essay that became the germ of Exit, Voice, and Loyalty.
The playwright evinces a deep sympathy for people who can't help themselves and an ear for clever exchanges, though these are sometimes slowed down in favor of allowing Fitzgerald and Hemingway to aphorize. Rather than tell a straight biography, though, Knee seems to have superimposed a story that's not organic to his characters.