Smile And Others Will Smile

Here In The U.s., Culture Is Not That Delicious Panacea Which We Europeans Consume In A Sacramental Mental Space And Which Has Its Own Special Columns In The Newspapers - And In People's Minds. Culture Is Space, Speed, Cinema, Technology. This Culture Is Authentic, If Anything Can Be Said To Be Authentic.

It Is A World Completely Rotten With Wealth, Power, Senility, Indifference, Puritanism And Mental Hygiene, Poverty And Waste, Technological Futility And Aimless Violence, And Yet I Cannot Help But Feel It Has About It Something Of The Dawning Of The Universe. Perhaps Because The Entire World Continues To Dream Of New York, Even As New York Dominates And Exploits It.

We Are Becoming Like Cats, Slyly Parasitic, Enjoying An Indifferent Domesticity. Nice And Snug In The Social, Our Historic Passions Have Withdrawn Into The Glow Of An Artificial Coziness, And Our Half-closed Eyes Now Seek Little Other Than The Peaceful Parade Of Television Pictures.

The Repentant, Run-to-seed Ultra-leftists Who Have Converted To Humanitarianism, Artificial Inseminators Of The Widow And The Orphan, Themselves Orphans Of Reality And Malades Imaginaires Of Politics, Premature Ejaculators Of Posthistory And Hyperchondriacs Of The Dead Body Of Ideology And Morality.

There Is Nothing More Mysterious Than A Tv Set Left On In An Empty Room. It Is Even Stranger Than A Man Talking To Himself Or A Woman Standing Dreaming At Her Stove. It Is As If Another Planet Is Communicating With You.