A Ton Of Proust Isn’t Worth An

Human Beings Today Are Surrounded By Huge Institutions We Can Never Penetrate: The City, The Banking System, Political And Advertising Conglomerates, Vast Entertainment Enterprises. They've Made Themselves User Friendly, But They Define The Tastes To Which We Conform. They're Rather Subtle, Subservient Tyrants, But No Less Sinister For That.

The Catastrophe Story, Whoever May Tell It, Represents A Constructive And Positive Act By The Imagination Rather Than A Negative One, An Attempt To Confront The Terrifying Void Of A Patently Meaningless Universe By Challenging It At Its Own Game. [. . .] Each One Of These Fantasies Represents An Arraignment Of The Finite, An Attempt To Dismantle The Formal Structure Of Time And Space Which The Universe Wraps Around Us At The Moment We First Achieve Consciousness.

Writing A Novel Is One Of Those Modern Rites Of Passage, I Think, That Lead Us From An Innocent World Of Contentment, Drunkenness, And Good Humor, To A State Of Chronic Edginess And The Perpetual Scanning Of Bank Statements.

During The 1960s, The Shanghai Of My Childhood Seemed A Portent Of The Media Cities Of The Future, Dominated By Advertising And Mass Circulation Newspapers And Swept By Unpredictable Violence.

Au Revoir, Jewelled Alligators And White Hotels, Hallucinatory Forests, Farewell.