Vaughn's Vision Is Older, Wiser And Harder

Well, I Wanted To Be A Philosopher, Which Is The Idlest Occupation In The World. I Wanted To Be Involved In Abstract Thought, But Because Of Various Problems With The Authorities I Wasn't Able To Pull That One Off. A Lifetime Of Idleness In Academia Would Have Really Suited Me. So I Was Thrown Out, As It Were. Other Than That, There Seemed No Possible Idle Occupations, So Writing . . . Although Writing Isn't Exactly Idleness. There's An Enormous Tension Between Indolence And Languor.

The Great Liberty Of The Fictional Writer Is To Let The Imagination Out Of The Traces And See It Gallop Off Over The Horizon.

If We Bought Everything On The Internet, Our Eyes And Mouths And Nostrils Would Probably Begin To Film Over With A Tegument - One Initially Tissue-thin And Capable Of Being Removed Each Morning, But Which Gradually Thickened And Hardened Until We Were Imprisoned In Our Own Tiny Minds.

Modernism Has A Reputation For Being A Forbidding Phenomenon: Its Visual Arts Disconcertingly Non-representational, Its Literary Efforts Devoid Of The Consolations Of Plot And Character - Even Its Films, It's Argued, Fall Well Short Of That True Desideratum: Entertainment.

Schadenfreude Is So Nutritious.