You go back to the real world, which can be a grind.

On the way down, I'm a big sleeper. I read magazines - nothing too hard.

What more chilling indictment of the modern world is there than this: that the condition of the smartphone user is that of a dumb animal. Moooo!

Who'd want to be a modernist writer in the English-speaking world?

Television is the same as the telephone, and the same as the World Wide Web for that matter. People who become obsessed by the peculiarities of these communications media have simply failed to adjust to the shock of the old. People who bleat on about the 'artistic' potential of television qua television are equally deluded.

It's an accident, but in today's world someone has got to be accountable for everything. Like the levee in New Orleans -who would have expected that to happen?