Impulse out of nowhere …

… Never a Dull Moment by Charles Baxter | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Like it or not, this vision of a population blown around by its own impulses has struck many readers as an accurate depiction of the way a sizable number of Americans typically behave. The pure products of America are going crazy on a regular basis these days. Unmethodical and uprooted erratic behavior is our signature, our keynote. If a character is incapable of planning anything or remembering her own history, then where does she belong? In with a shadowy, helter-skelter submerged population group, that’s where.