Bourgeois complacency.(Low life)(Column)

Publication: Spectator

Publication Date: 25-JUN-05

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COPYRIGHT 2005 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)

Leaning against the hotel bar after dinner on the first evening of our residential erotic-writing course. On my right, John, a tall young energetic skinhead theatre director. On my left, Yannis, a short dignified old Greek intellectual who was kicked out of Greece by the Colonels. Yannis owned the hotel. John and I were would-be erotic writers. Our trio was a sort of self-consciously male enclave in a bar jam-packed with wine-swilling female erotic writers.

We hadn't met before. John wanted to talk politics straight away. Worse still, he wanted to shake Yannis and me out of our--presumably--bourgeois complacency. He kicked off by lamenting the fact that none of the political parties was committed to an ideology these days. In particular, he yearned...

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