A Visit To Père Lachaise In Paris

Hell Is Out Of Fashion --institutional Hells At Any Rate. The Populated Infernos Of The 20th Century Are More Private Affairs, The Gaps Between The Bars Are The Sutures Of One's Own Skull. . .

I Don't Think Any Particular Painters Have Inspired Me, Except In A General Sense. It Was More A Matter Of Corroboration. The Visual Arts, From Manet Onwards, Seemed Far More Open To Change And Experiment Than The Novel, Though That's Only Partly The Fault Of The Writers. There's Something About The Novel That Resists Innovation.

Hell Is Out Of Fashion - Institutional Hells At Any Rate. The Populated Infernos Of The 20th Century Are More Private Affairs, The Gaps Between The Bars Are The Sutures Of One's Own Skull. A Valid Hell Is One From Which There Is A Possibility Of Redemption, Even If This Is Never Achieved, The Dungeons Of An Architecture Of Grace Whose Spires Point To Some Kind Of Heaven. The Institutional Hells Of The Present Century Are Reached With One-way Tickets, Marked Nagasaki And Buchenwald, Worlds Of Terminal Horror Even More Final Than The Grave.

Civilised Life, You Know, Is Based On A Huge Number Of Illusions In Which We All Collaborate Willingly. The Trouble Is We Forget After A While That They Are Illusions And We Are Deeply Shocked When Reality Is Torn Down Around Us.

In His Mind Vaughan Saw The Whole World Dying In A Simultaneous Automobile Disaster, Millions Of Vehicles Hurled Together In A Terminal Congress Of Spurting Loins And Engine Coolant.