A Widespread Taste For Pornography Means That

In The Past We Have Always Assumed That The External World Around Us Has Represented Reality, However Confusing Or Uncertain, And That The Inner World Of Our Minds, Its Dreams, Hopes, Ambitions, Represented The Realm Of Fantasy, And The Imagination. These Roles, It Seems To Me, Have Been Reversed. The Most Prudent And Effective Method Of Dealing With The World Around Us Is To Assume That It Is A Complete Fiction - Conversely, The One Small Node Of Reality Left To Us Is Inside Of Our Own Heads.

We Live In A World Ruled By Fictions Of Every Kind - Mass Merchandising, Advertising, Politics Conducted As A Branch Of Advertising, The Instant Translation Of Science And Technology Into Popular Imagery, The Increasing Blurring And Intermingling Of Identities Within The Realm Of Consumer Goods, The Preempting Of Any Free Or Original Imaginative Response To Experience By The Television Screen. We Live Inside An Enormous Novel.

It Was An Excess Of Fantasy That Killed The Old United States, The Whole Mickey Mouse And Marilyn Thing, The Most Brilliant Technologies Devoted To Trivia Like Instant Cameras And Space Spectaculars That Should Have Stayed In The Pages Of Science Fiction . . . Some Of The Last Presidents Of The U.s.a. Seemed To Have Been Recruited Straight From Disneyland.

The Surrealists, And The Modern Movement In Painting As A Whole, Seemed To Offer A Key To The Strange Postwar World With Its Threat Of Nuclear War. The Dislocations And Ambiguities, In Cubism And Abstract Art As Well As The Surrealists, Reminded Me Of My Childhood In Shanghai.

People, Particularly Over-moralistic Americans, Have Often Seen Me As A Pessimist And Humourless To Boot, Yet I Think I Have An Almost Maniacal Sense Of Humour. The Problem Is That It's Rather Deadpan.