Blogs are tops. What did we ever do without them? In fact, life without the internet on the whole seems like another planet in another dimension.
In other news, my show includes subliminal nods to both Officeworks and Corporate Express. I don't think it's particularly significant, but there it is. Symbols abound.
Jemand musste Josef K verleumdet haben. Why can I not get this out of my head?
Showing posts with label Kafka. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kafka. Show all posts
Friday, November 13, 2009
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Jemande musste Josef K verleumdet haben ...
What Christopher Hitchens says to do with Kafka:
... When I went to Czechoslovakia under the old Communist regime one day in the '80s, I thought to myself whatever I do, whatever happens to me in Prague I'm not going to use the name Kafka, I'm just not going to do it. I won't do it; it's so easy, everyone else does, I'm not going to. I'll write the first non-Kafka mentioning piece. So I went to this meeting of this then-unknown dissident, Vaclav Havel and various of his Czech friends and Slovak friends in an apartment in Prague and we thought that no-one knew that he had these visitors coming from America, but someone must have given us away because it wasn't long before the door fell in and in come police dogs and guys in leather coats carrying heavy electric torches and truncheons and so on, slammed me up against the wall and said, 'You're under arrest and you've got to come with us.' And I said - I thought of saying 'I demand to see the Ambassador', and I said, 'What's the charge?' And they said, 'We don't have to tell you the charge'. And I thought 'fuck. Now I do have to mention Kafka'. Totalitarian is a cliché, dictatorship is based on clichéd thinking, on very tried and tested uniform stuff. They don't mind that they're boring, they don't mind that they're obvious, their point is made and I thought 'Now you've made me, I know you're going to make me do it'.
... When I went to Czechoslovakia under the old Communist regime one day in the '80s, I thought to myself whatever I do, whatever happens to me in Prague I'm not going to use the name Kafka, I'm just not going to do it. I won't do it; it's so easy, everyone else does, I'm not going to. I'll write the first non-Kafka mentioning piece. So I went to this meeting of this then-unknown dissident, Vaclav Havel and various of his Czech friends and Slovak friends in an apartment in Prague and we thought that no-one knew that he had these visitors coming from America, but someone must have given us away because it wasn't long before the door fell in and in come police dogs and guys in leather coats carrying heavy electric torches and truncheons and so on, slammed me up against the wall and said, 'You're under arrest and you've got to come with us.' And I said - I thought of saying 'I demand to see the Ambassador', and I said, 'What's the charge?' And they said, 'We don't have to tell you the charge'. And I thought 'fuck. Now I do have to mention Kafka'. Totalitarian is a cliché, dictatorship is based on clichéd thinking, on very tried and tested uniform stuff. They don't mind that they're boring, they don't mind that they're obvious, their point is made and I thought 'Now you've made me, I know you're going to make me do it'.
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