Eschewing sense: a rant.

The Guardian newspaper is well-known (and well-loved) for its misprints (I do hope that it really did publish its legendary review of the opera Doris Godunov) but the problem that occurred in Will Self's article on William Burroughs went beyond a joke.

Here is the offending passage:

'...his [Burroughs'] quintessentially Midwestern libertarianism led him to eschew any command economy of ethics, while his personal inclinations meant he had to travel with distastefully socialist and liberal fellows. For Burroughs, the re-evaluation was both discount and markup, and perhaps it was this that made him such a great avatar of the emergent counterculture.'

See? That bit has come out in some foreign language.

Now, I'm relying on your help, here.

Does anyone know in which language this passage has been written?

And, secondly, does anyone have the faintest idea what it might mean?

Word To Use Today: eschew. Well, why not? At least you'll have lots of people saying bless you. Eschew comes from the Old French eschiver, which in turn comes from some Germanic root. It might be something to do with the Old High German skiuhan, which means to frighten away.