by
Nick Hornby
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I mee Caroline when she comes to interview me for her newspaper, and I fall for her straight away, no messing [...] But I think I would have gone for anyone today. [...]
basically right after he gets back together with Laura
'Who's it for?' Laura asks when she sees me fiddling around with fades and running orders and levels.
'Oh, just that woman who interviewed me for the free paper. Carol? Caroline? Something like that. She said it would be easier, you know, if she had a feel for the kind of music we play.' But I can't say it without blushing and staring intently at the cassette deck, and I know she doesn't really believe me. She of all people knows what compilation tapes represent.
This time, something different happens, though. It's the day-dreaming that does it. I'm doing the usual thing--imagining in tiny detail the entire course of the relationship, from first kiss, to bed, to moving in together, to getting married (in the past I have even organized the track listing of the party tapes), to how pretty she'll look when she's pregnant, to names of children--until suddenly I realize that there's nothing left to actually, like, happen. I've done it all, lived through the whole relationship in my head. I've watched the film on fast-forward; I know the whole plot, the ending, all the good bits. Now I've got to rewind and watch it all over again in real time, and where's the fun in that?
And fucking ... when's it all going to fucking stop? I'm going to jump from rock to rock for the rest of my life until there aren't any rocks left? I'm going to run each time I get itchy feet? Because I get them about once a quarter, along with the utilities bills. More than that, even, during British Summer Time. I've been thinking with my guts since I was fourteen years old, and frankly speaking, between you and me, I have come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains.
I know what's wrong with Laura. What's wrong with Laura is that I'll never see her for the first or second or third time again. I'll never spend two or three days in a sweat trying to remember what she looks like, never again will I get to a pub half an hour early to meet her, staring at the same article in a magazine and looking at my watch every thirty seconds, never again will thinking about her set something off in me like 'Let's Get It On' sets something off in me. [...]
inspiration for Chris Fogle character
[...] Most public libraries are funded by property taxes, which create well-funded libraries in wealthy areas and underfunded ones in communities where a library would benefit people most. Educational institutions would not have to grovel to corporate interests if they were divorced from property-tax-based funding. We need equitably distributed funds for all public education.
letter from Mike Monahan, Chicago, IL
[...] We can’t count on the Democrats to put up a fight; the fight must come from the Left.
[...] the Left needs a vision, not a defensive posture. We must organize around a positive, forward-looking program for real change — a program that gives people
something to fight for, not just something to fight against.
The Left no longer has Marxism or any other coherent intellectual structure ... no rigorous foundation to rely on, no ideology to give it organization and shape.... It undermines the power and effectiveness of modern politics more generally.
David Brooks with a surprisingly valid critique of modern-day liberals
The big question is whether this nationalist political right represents a turn away from transnational capital accumulation. These forces sometimes express themselves as protectors of domestic manufacturing jobs. But I don’t think that’s their main thrust. Their main thrust is to define the nation again in xenophobic terms, which also combines with protection of old cultural values that would restore hierarchies of race, gender, and sexual orientation.
in response to the interviewer's comment that Trump's economic agenda is just "neoliberalism with a white nationalist face"
[...] it’s worth remembering that fascist regimes were capitalist. There is a tendency among analysts to think of capitalist regimes as tending to be free-market, but the type of state-led capitalism that Hitler introduced was very much capitalist. [...] we might see authoritarian state-led, but blatantly capitalist, infrastructure programs and policies.
Yet both of them played the nationalist card, and it shows the extent to which the nation-state has remained integral to the global accumulation projects of so many capitalists. These guys understand that for accumulation to continue on a global scale, you need to legitimate it by attaching it to a xenophobic nationalism of some kind. They’re trying to ride this tiger of nationalistic ideology that allows global accumulation to continue. That may be at the expense of the Ukrainian or the
Estonian nationalists, and for sure at the expense of Mexican immigrants, let alone refugees of every sort.
on the similarities between Trump and Nigel Farage
The American right [...] is on the march again. In some sense, this resurgence is hard to understand. If you buy the thesis that the Right is driven by a defense of hierarchy and privilege and draws its energy from opposition to a strong left, its strength is almost incomprehensible. It’s hard to think of a time when American capital and capitalists were so politically secure. [...]
what more do they want