New Delhi, March 2 -- If you want a one-liner to put on a T-shirt that sums up the spirit of the times we are living in, I bet you can't find a better one than this droll sentence from the late Philip Roth's 1993 novel, Operation Shylock: "It's too ridiculous to take seriously and too serious to be ridiculous."

I stumbled upon it in writer and activist Naomi Klein's 2023 book, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, where this quote runs like a refrain, much like an anthem you may hum under your breath every time you are scrolling through the internet, especially if you are looking for news or information that is reliably true. The "mirror world" that Klein refers to in the subtitle is, in part, a reference to the world wide web, a d...