But it makes them vulnerable because it is unnatural and leaves them dependent on fantasies to justify their existence.
Hence the drive toward "realism" contingent upon the representational aspects of language, dependent on the fantasy that the language is as stable as the society, or at least it ought to be as stable as the society.
By making the resolution of "Handcarved Coffins" dependent on his fantasies, he is able to exploit his fascination with, and uncanny perception of, the criminal mentality--a talent that is further evinced in a remarkable interview, called "Then It All Came Down," which he conducts with a psychopathic killer distantly related to the Charles Manson family.
Entering a shared fantasy world, they become dependent on one another, and when Andreas is suddenly taken away, Toby is naturally bereft.
What they got up to on the island is also sketchy ("I guess they got good at crosswords"), leaving the poem more than a little dependent on our projected fantasies of far-flung places ("Our course is plotted not in the life we've got but the one we've vowed not to have", as we read in one of the charming artworks by Mike McDonnell accompanying the poem).
"The idea that government can regulate a business it has become so dependent on is perhaps a fantasy," he said.
Indeed, among Unsworth's ideas for the city centre area is a school: one of the ways that this environment can capture the family market and widen the demographic far beyond the 25-35 year olds targeted by the early developers, who were too often dependent on propping up a fantasy market of restaurant-going couples – so often shown in glossy publicity material.
The leading French couture houses became dependent on romantically fervid British fantasies and dreams.
They were dependent on no one.
Like David Cameron's £13bn in "overseas sales" supposedly dependent on "Olympics diplomacy", it was fantasy economics.
But these free-agent fantasies are dependent on dozens of variables, most of which are beyond the Knicks' control and nearly all of which have to do with the coming labor battle between the owners and the players.
