And in a Christian context, the thanks went in two directions: to God for sacrificing his son to benefit humankind, and to Jesus for promising, at the Last Supper, to be forever present to the faithful through the ritual of Holy Communion.
If some of the plot developments occasionally feel contrived to fit in with his grand scheme – this is very much a book in which villains are both omniscient and forever present – then it barely matters, such is the visionary glee with which Theroux creates a world in which man's identity is no longer restricted to physical form, but instead is as mutable as shifting a song between music devices.
For a writer, it's a dubious honor to be thus referenced but not quite read: it's a way to remain forever present and forever misunderstood.
With his barely contained hysteria and that volatile crackle of insanity forever present behind his eyes, he would make an uncanny Elizabeth Taylor.
The combination of pepper spray, Swat teams and judicial torture – for that is what it was – underlined for me a strain of American life that is forever present but rarely makes itself so boldly visible as it has this week.
Naturally, an automation in automotive field includes an improvement of vehicle features that will become, in short time, normal production functionalities, since forever present on vehicles for users.
It is of course forever present, but people also have lives beyond this.
Earlier this month Isaac Chotiner bemoaned the president's habit of forever presenting both sides of every argument, accusing him of "talk[ing] to us like we're children": "It's as if the reader can't be trusted to just hear one side from the president, because that might (heaven forbid) make him or her think Obama hasn't considered every angle".
Maybe it was the stress of worrying about the boy, or the mounting difficulties of his own psychic isolation in a foreign land; maybe it was his frustration with the corrupt Ivorian government, which was forever presenting new documents he had to buy, new taxes he had to pay.
If we're stuck with these two mentalities, we will be forever presented with proposals that are incommensurate with the problem at hand.
