This is a fantastic piece of work, Justin. One thing I kept thinking while reading it was the degree to which this story branches out into little microcosms of some of the biggest issues affecting America today.

Just off the top of my head:

(1) How we raise our children, and the long-term consequences of childhood trauma upon our adult decisions (alluded to w/r/t Farrow's upbringing).

(2) America's relationship to the developing world.

(3) The media's role in transmitting accurate vs. less-than-fully-accurate accounts of the world to the broader public.

(4) Racism (subtly alluded to in the different experiences of the Farrow children).

(5) Not so much sexism but the male gaze—broader observations about heterosexuality through which Allen and Previn's relationship may function as a prism, given its striking but finally fairly prototypical features (the age difference; the power difference between the male and female partners; the absent father trope (parodied, here, as the boyfriend indifferent to his single-mom-girlfriend’s children); and finally the relationship’s longevity—these features all seem to “parody” an otherwise inadmissible ideal our country has for our male-female partnerships).

(6) Elitism and classism (Farrow's push to change the adoption laws).

And there are more—those are just the first six that comes to mind upon cursory reflection. There's a novel about America in the twenty-first century to be written here inside this strangely, strangely emblematic story.

Thank you, Justin, for laying it all out so intelligently.