What will be the influence of communist society on the family?
It will transform the relations between the sexes into a purely private matter which concerns only the persons involved and into which society has no occasion to intervene. It can do this since it does away with private property and educates children on a communal basis, and in this way removes the two bases of traditional marriage–the dependence rooted in private property, of the women on the man, and of the children on the parents.
Frederick Engels, “The Principles of Communism” (first draft of “The Communist Manifesto”) (1847)
Great progress was evident in the last Congress of the American ‘Labour Union’ in that, among other things, it treated working women with complete equality. While in this respect the English, and still more the gallant French, are burdened with a spirit of narrow-mindedness. Anybody who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without the feminine ferment. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex (the ugly ones included).
Marx, letter to Ludwig Kugelmann (December 12, 1868)
Full freedom of marriage can therefore only be generally established when the abolition of capitalist production and of the property relations created by it has removed all the accompanying economic considerations which still exert such a powerful influence on the choice of a marriage partner. For then there is no other motive left except mutual inclination.
[...]
What we can now conjecture about the way in which sexual relations will be ordered after the impending overthrow of capitalist production is mainly of a negative character, limited for the most part to what will disappear. But what will there be new? That will be answered when a new generation has grown up: a generation of men who never in their lives have known what it is to buy a woman’s surrender with money or any other social instrument of power; a generation of women who have never known what it is to give themselves to a man from any other considerations than real love, or to refuse to give themselves to their lover from fear of the economic consequences. When these people are in the world, they will care precious little what anybody today thinks they ought to do; they will make their own practice and their corresponding public opinion about the practice of each individual—and that will be the end of it.
Great progress was evident in the last Congress of the American ‘Labour Union’ in that, among other things, it treated working women with complete equality. While in this respect the English, and still more the gallant French, are burdened with a spirit of narrow-mindedness. Anybody who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without the feminine ferment. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex (the ugly ones included).
Marx, letter to Ludwig Kugelmann (December 12, 1868)
Full freedom of marriage can therefore only be generally established when the abolition of capitalist production and of the property relations created by it has removed all the accompanying economic considerations which still exert such a powerful influence on the choice of a marriage partner. For then there is no other motive left except mutual inclination.
[...]
What we can now conjecture about the way in which sexual relations will be ordered after the impending overthrow of capitalist production is mainly of a negative character, limited for the most part to what will disappear. But what will there be new? That will be answered when a new generation has grown up: a generation of men who never in their lives have known what it is to buy a woman’s surrender with money or any other social instrument of power; a generation of women who have never known what it is to give themselves to a man from any other considerations than real love, or to refuse to give themselves to their lover from fear of the economic consequences. When these people are in the world, they will care precious little what anybody today thinks they ought to do; they will make their own practice and their corresponding public opinion about the practice of each individual—and that will be the end of it.
Frederick Engels,
Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884)
We must all admit that vestiges of the bourgeois-intellectual phrase-mongering approach to questions of the revolution are in evidence at every step, everywhere, even in our own ranks. Our press, for example, does little to fight these rotten survivals of the rotten, bourgeois-democratic past; it does little to foster the simple, modest, ordinary but viable shoots of genuine communism.
We must all admit that vestiges of the bourgeois-intellectual phrase-mongering approach to questions of the revolution are in evidence at every step, everywhere, even in our own ranks. Our press, for example, does little to fight these rotten survivals of the rotten, bourgeois-democratic past; it does little to foster the simple, modest, ordinary but viable shoots of genuine communism.
Take the position of women. In this field, not a single democratic party in the world, not even in the most advanced bourgeois republic, has done in decades so much as a hundredth part of what we did in our very first year in power. We really razed to the ground the infamous laws placing women in a position of inequality, restricting divorce and surrounding it with disgusting formalities, denying recognition to children born out of wedlock, enforcing a search for their fathers, etc., laws numerous survivals of which, to the shame of the bourgeoisie and of capitalism, are to be found in all civilised countries. We have a thousand times the right to be proud of what we have done in this field. But the more thoroughly we have cleared the ground of the lumber of the old, bourgeois laws and institutions, the clearer it is to us that we have only cleared the ground to build on but are not yet building.
Notwithstanding all the laws emancipating woman, she continues to be a domestic slave, because petty housework crushes, strangles, stultifies and degrades her, chains her to the kitchen and the nursery, and she wastes her labour on barbarously unproductive, petty, nerve-racking, stultifying and crushing drudgery. The real emancipation of women, real communism, will begin only where and when an all-out struggle begins (led by the proletariat wielding the state power) against this petty housekeeping, or rather when its wholesale transformation into a large-scale socialist economy begins.
Do we in practice pay sufficient attention to this question, which in theory every Communist considers indisputable? Of course not. Do we take proper care of the shoots of communism which already exist in this sphere? Again the answer is no. Public catering establishments, nurseries, kindergartens—here we have examples of these shoots, here we have the simple, everyday means, involving nothing pompous, grandiloquent or ceremonial, which can really emancipate women, really lessen and abolish their inequality with men as regards their role in social production and public life. These means are not new, they (like all the material prerequisites for socialism) were created by large-scale capitalism. But under capitalism they remained, first, a rarity, and secondly—which is particularly important—either profitmaking enterprises, with all the worst features of speculation, profiteering, cheating and fraud, or “acrobatics of bourgeois charity,” which the best workers rightly hated and despised.
There is no doubt that the number of these institutions in our country has increased enormously and that they are beginning to change in character. There is no doubt that we have far more organising talent among the working and peasant women than we are aware of, that we have far more people than we know of who can organise practical work, with the co-operation of large numbers of workers and of still larger numbers of consumers, without that abundance of talk, fuss, squabbling and chatter about plans, systems, etc., with which our big-headed “intellectuals” or half-baked “Communists” are “affected.” But we do not nurse these shoots of the new as we should.
Lenin, A Great Beginning: Heroism of the Workers in the Rear “Communist Subbotniks” (June 28, 1919)
[“The ABC of Communism” was drafted in 1919 by two leaders of the Communist Party of Russia to explain the party’s program to workers and the general public.]
§ 50 The equality of the workers, irrespective of sex, creed and race
Notwithstanding all the laws emancipating woman, she continues to be a domestic slave, because petty housework crushes, strangles, stultifies and degrades her, chains her to the kitchen and the nursery, and she wastes her labour on barbarously unproductive, petty, nerve-racking, stultifying and crushing drudgery. The real emancipation of women, real communism, will begin only where and when an all-out struggle begins (led by the proletariat wielding the state power) against this petty housekeeping, or rather when its wholesale transformation into a large-scale socialist economy begins.
Do we in practice pay sufficient attention to this question, which in theory every Communist considers indisputable? Of course not. Do we take proper care of the shoots of communism which already exist in this sphere? Again the answer is no. Public catering establishments, nurseries, kindergartens—here we have examples of these shoots, here we have the simple, everyday means, involving nothing pompous, grandiloquent or ceremonial, which can really emancipate women, really lessen and abolish their inequality with men as regards their role in social production and public life. These means are not new, they (like all the material prerequisites for socialism) were created by large-scale capitalism. But under capitalism they remained, first, a rarity, and secondly—which is particularly important—either profitmaking enterprises, with all the worst features of speculation, profiteering, cheating and fraud, or “acrobatics of bourgeois charity,” which the best workers rightly hated and despised.
There is no doubt that the number of these institutions in our country has increased enormously and that they are beginning to change in character. There is no doubt that we have far more organising talent among the working and peasant women than we are aware of, that we have far more people than we know of who can organise practical work, with the co-operation of large numbers of workers and of still larger numbers of consumers, without that abundance of talk, fuss, squabbling and chatter about plans, systems, etc., with which our big-headed “intellectuals” or half-baked “Communists” are “affected.” But we do not nurse these shoots of the new as we should.
Lenin, A Great Beginning: Heroism of the Workers in the Rear “Communist Subbotniks” (June 28, 1919)
[“The ABC of Communism” was drafted in 1919 by two leaders of the Communist Party of Russia to explain the party’s program to workers and the general public.]
§ 50 The equality of the workers, irrespective of sex, creed and race
The working woman in capitalist society is peculiarly oppressed, peculiarly deprived of rights. In all matters she has even less than the beggarly rights which the bourgeoisie grants to the working man. The right to the parliamentary vote has been conceded in a few countries only. As regards the right of inheritance, woman everywhere receives the beggar’s portion. In family life she is always subject to her husband, and everything that goes wrong is considered to be her fault. In a word, bourgeois democracy everywhere exhibits as regards women laws and customs which strongly remind us of the customs of savages, who exchange, buy, punish, or steal women just as if they were chattels, dolls, or beasts of burden. Our Russian proverb runs, “A hen is not a bird, and a woman is not a person”; here we have the valuation of a slave society. This state of affairs is extremely disadvantageous to the proletariat. There are more women than men amongst the workers. It is obvious that the struggle of the proletariat must be greatly hindered by the lack of equality between the two halves of which it is composed. Without the aid of the women of the proletariat, it is idle to dream of a general victory, it is idle to dream of the “freeing of labour.” For this reason, it is greatly to the interest of the working class that there should be complete fighting comradeship between the female and the male portions of the proletariat, and that this comradeship should be strengthened by equality. The Soviet Power is the first to have realized such equality in all departments of life: in marriage, in the family, in political affairs, etc. In all things, throughout Soviet Russia, women are the equals of men.
It is incumbent upon our party to effect the realization of this equality in actual life. Before all, we must make it clear to the broad masses of the workers that the subjection of women is extremely harmful to them. Hitherto among the workers it has been customary to look upon women as inferiors; as for the peasants, they smile when a ‘mere woman’ begins to take an interest in social affairs. In the Soviet Republic the working woman has exactly the same rights as the working man; she can elect to the soviets and be elected to them; she can hold any commissar’s office; can do any kind of work in the army, in economic life, and in the State administration.
It is incumbent upon our party to effect the realization of this equality in actual life. Before all, we must make it clear to the broad masses of the workers that the subjection of women is extremely harmful to them. Hitherto among the workers it has been customary to look upon women as inferiors; as for the peasants, they smile when a ‘mere woman’ begins to take an interest in social affairs. In the Soviet Republic the working woman has exactly the same rights as the working man; she can elect to the soviets and be elected to them; she can hold any commissar’s office; can do any kind of work in the army, in economic life, and in the State administration.
But in Russia, working women are far more backward than working men. Many people look down upon them. In this matter persevering efforts are needed: among men, that they may cease blocking women’s road; among women, that they may learn to make a full use of their rights, may cease to be timid or diffident.
We must not forget [Lenin’s dictum] that “every cook has to be taught to take her share in governmental administration.” We have learned above that the really important matter is not the right that is written on paper, but the possibility of realizing a right in practice. How can a working woman effectively realize her rights when she has to devote so much time to housekeeping, must go to the market and wait her turn there, must do the family washing, must look after her children, must bear the heavy burden of all this domestic drudgery?
The aim of the Soviet Republic and of our party must be, to deliver working women from such slavery, to free the working woman from these obsolete and antediluvian conditions. The organization of house communes (not places in which people will wrangle, but places in which they will live like human beings) with central wash-houses; the organization of communal kitchens; the organization of communal nurseries, kindergartens, playgrounds, summer colonies for children, schools with communal dining rooms, etc.—such are the things which will enfranchise woman, and will make it possible for her to interest herself in all those matters which now interest the proletarian man.
The aim of the Soviet Republic and of our party must be, to deliver working women from such slavery, to free the working woman from these obsolete and antediluvian conditions. The organization of house communes (not places in which people will wrangle, but places in which they will live like human beings) with central wash-houses; the organization of communal kitchens; the organization of communal nurseries, kindergartens, playgrounds, summer colonies for children, schools with communal dining rooms, etc.—such are the things which will enfranchise woman, and will make it possible for her to interest herself in all those matters which now interest the proletarian man.
In an era of devastation and famine, it is, of course, difficult to do all these things as they ought to be done. Nevertheless, our party must in this manner do its utmost to attract the working woman to play her part in the common task.
Nikolai Bukharin and Evgenii Preobrazhensky, The ABC of Communism (1920)
Soviet legislation bases itself on the following principle: it declares the absolute non-interference of the state and society into sexual matters so long as nobody is injured and no one's interests are encroached upon. [...] Concerning homosexuality, sodomy, and various other forms of sexual gratification, which are set down in European legislation as offences against public morality—Soviet legislation treats these exactly the same as so-called “natural” intercourse. All forms of sexual intercourse are private matters.
Grigorii Batkis (director of the Moscow Institute of Social Hygiene), “The Sexual Revolution in Russia” [cited here] (1923)
[In a January 14, 1933 article, the American general-interest magazine Liberty (rival of the Saturday Evening Post) published a series of 14 questions on Soviet life the editors had put to revolutionary leader in exile Leon Trotsky, along with his responses.]
Soviet legislation bases itself on the following principle: it declares the absolute non-interference of the state and society into sexual matters so long as nobody is injured and no one's interests are encroached upon. [...] Concerning homosexuality, sodomy, and various other forms of sexual gratification, which are set down in European legislation as offences against public morality—Soviet legislation treats these exactly the same as so-called “natural” intercourse. All forms of sexual intercourse are private matters.
Grigorii Batkis (director of the Moscow Institute of Social Hygiene), “The Sexual Revolution in Russia” [cited here] (1923)
[In a January 14, 1933 article, the American general-interest magazine Liberty (rival of the Saturday Evening Post) published a series of 14 questions on Soviet life the editors had put to revolutionary leader in exile Leon Trotsky, along with his responses.]
3. “Have the Soviets robbed childhood of joy?”
For what reason and in what manner? Soviet children play, sing, dance, and cry like all other children. The unusual care of the Soviet regime for the child is admitted even by malevolent observers. Compared with the old regime, infant mortality has declined by half. It is true, Soviet children are told nothing about original sin and Paradise. In this sense one may say that the children are robbed of the joys of life after death. Being no expert in these matters, I dare not judge the extent of the loss. Still, the pains of this life take a certain precedence over the joys of the life to come. If children absorb the necessary quantity of calories, the abundance of their living forces will find reasons enough for joy.
4. “Is Bolshevism deliberately destroying the family?”
If one understands by “family” a compulsory union based on marriage contract, the blessing of the church, property rights, and the single passport, then Bolshevism has destroyed this policed family from the roots up.
If one understands by “family” the unbounded domination of parents over children, and absence of legal rights for the wife, then Bolshevism has, unfortunately, not yet completely destroyed this carryover of society’s old barbarism.
If one understands by “family” a compulsory union based on marriage contract, the blessing of the church, property rights, and the single passport, then Bolshevism has destroyed this policed family from the roots up.
If one understands by “family” the unbounded domination of parents over children, and absence of legal rights for the wife, then Bolshevism has, unfortunately, not yet completely destroyed this carryover of society’s old barbarism.
If one understands by “family” ideal monogamy, not in the legal but in the actual sense, then the Bolsheviks could not destroy what never was nor is on earth, barring fortunate exceptions.
8. “Is it true that a divorce may be had for the asking?”
8. “Is it true that a divorce may be had for the asking?”
Of course it is true. It would have been more in place to ask another question: “Is it true that there are still countries where divorce cannot be obtained for the asking by either party to a marriage?”
10. “Is the ultimate object of Bolshevism to reproduce the beehive or the ant stage in human life?”
11. “In what respect does the ideal of Bolshevism differ from the state of civilization that would prevail on earth if insects had secured control?”
10. “Is the ultimate object of Bolshevism to reproduce the beehive or the ant stage in human life?”
11. “In what respect does the ideal of Bolshevism differ from the state of civilization that would prevail on earth if insects had secured control?”
Both questions are unfair to the insect as well as to man. Neither ants nor bees have to answer for such monstrosities as fill human history. On the other hand, no matter how bad human beings may be, they have possibilities which no insect can reach. It would not be difficult to prove that the task of the Soviets is precisely this to destroy the ant characteristics of human society.
The fact is, bees as well as ants have classes: some work or fight, others specialize in reproduction. Can one see in such a specialization of social functions the ideal of Bolshevism? These are rather the characteristics of our present day civilization carried to the limit. Certain species of ants make slaves of brother ants of different color.
The Soviet system does not resemble this at all. The ants have not yet even produced their John Brown or Abraham Lincoln.
Benjamin Franklin described man as “the tool making animal.” This notable characterization is at the bottom of the Marxist interpretation of history. The artificial tool has released man from the animal kingdom and has given impetus to the work of the human intellect; it has caused the changes from slavery to feudalism, capitalism, and the Soviet system.
The meaning of the question is clearly that a universal all embracing control must kill individuality. The evil of the Soviet system would then consist in its excessive control, would it not? Yet a series of other questions, as we have seen, accuses the Soviets of refusal to bring under state control the most intimate fields of personal life, love, family, sex relations. The contradiction is perfectly evident.
The Soviets by no means make it their task to put under control the intellectual and the moral powers of man. On the contrary, through control of economic life they want to free every human personality from the control of the market and its blind forces.
Ford organized automobile production on the conveyor system and thereby obtained an enormous output. The task of socialism, when one gets down to the principle of productive technique, is to organize the entire national and international economy on the conveyor system, on the basis of a plan and of an accurate proportionment of its parts. The conveyor principle, transferred from single factories to all factories and farms, must result in such an output performance that, compared with it, Ford’s achievement would look like a miserable handicraft shop alongside of Detroit. Once he has conquered nature, man will no longer have to earn his daily bread in the sweat of his brow. That is the prerequisite for the liberation of personality.
The Soviet system does not resemble this at all. The ants have not yet even produced their John Brown or Abraham Lincoln.
Benjamin Franklin described man as “the tool making animal.” This notable characterization is at the bottom of the Marxist interpretation of history. The artificial tool has released man from the animal kingdom and has given impetus to the work of the human intellect; it has caused the changes from slavery to feudalism, capitalism, and the Soviet system.
The meaning of the question is clearly that a universal all embracing control must kill individuality. The evil of the Soviet system would then consist in its excessive control, would it not? Yet a series of other questions, as we have seen, accuses the Soviets of refusal to bring under state control the most intimate fields of personal life, love, family, sex relations. The contradiction is perfectly evident.
The Soviets by no means make it their task to put under control the intellectual and the moral powers of man. On the contrary, through control of economic life they want to free every human personality from the control of the market and its blind forces.
Ford organized automobile production on the conveyor system and thereby obtained an enormous output. The task of socialism, when one gets down to the principle of productive technique, is to organize the entire national and international economy on the conveyor system, on the basis of a plan and of an accurate proportionment of its parts. The conveyor principle, transferred from single factories to all factories and farms, must result in such an output performance that, compared with it, Ford’s achievement would look like a miserable handicraft shop alongside of Detroit. Once he has conquered nature, man will no longer have to earn his daily bread in the sweat of his brow. That is the prerequisite for the liberation of personality.
As soon as three or four hours, let us say, of daily labor suffice to satisfy liberally all material wants, every man and woman will have twenty hours left over, free of all “control.” Questions of education, of perfecting the bodily and spiritual structure of man, will occupy the center of general attention. The philosophical and scientific schools, the opposing tendencies in literature, architecture, and art in general, will for the first time be of vital concern not merely to a top layer but to the whole mass of the population. Freed from the pressure of blind economic forces, the struggle of groups, tendencies, and schools will take on a profoundly ideal and unselfish character. In this atmosphere human personality will not dry up, but on the contrary for the first time will come to full bloom.
Fourteen Questions Answered by Leon Trotsky
Fourteen Questions Answered by Leon Trotsky
Epilogue: After the Political Counterrevolution
One of the members of the highest Soviet court, Soltz, a specialist on matrimonial questions, bases the forthcoming prohibition of abortion on the fact that in a socialist society where there are no unemployed, etc., etc., a woman has no right to decline “the joys of motherhood.” The philosophy of a priest endowed also with the powers of a gendarme. We just heard from the central organ of the ruling party that the birth of a child is for many women, and it would be truer to say for the overwhelming majority, “a menace to their position.” We just heard from the highest Soviet institution that “the liquidation of homeless and uncared-for children is being weakly carried out,” which undoubtedly means a new increase of homelessness. But here the highest Soviet judge informs us that in a country where “life is happy” abortion should be punished with imprisonment—just exactly as in capitalist countries where life is grievous. It is clear in advance that in the Soviet Union as in the West those who will fall into the claws of the jailer will be chiefly working women, servants, peasant wives, who find it hard to conceal their troubles. As far as concerns “our women”, who furnish the demand for fine perfumes and other pleasant things, they will, as formerly, do what they find necessary under the very nose of an indulgent justiciary. “We have need of people,” concludes Soltz, closing his eyes to the homeless. “Then have the kindness to bear them yourselves,” might be the answer to the high judge of millions of toiling women, if the bureaucracy had not sealed their lips with the seal of silence. These gentlemen have, it seems, completely forgotten that socialism was to remove the cause which impels woman to abortion, and not force her into the “joys of motherhood” with the help of a foul police interference in what is to every woman the most intimate sphere of life.
The draft of the law forbidding abortion was submitted to so-called universal popular discussion, and even through the fine sieve of the Soviet press many bitter complaints and stifled protests broke out. The discussion was cut off as suddenly as it had been announced, and on June 27th the Central Executive Committee converted the shameful draft into a thrice shameful law. Even some of the official apologists of the bureaucracy were embarrassed. Louis Fischer declared this piece of legislation something in the nature of a deplorable misunderstanding. In reality the new law against women—with an exception in favor of ladies—is the natural and logical fruit of a Thermidorian reaction.
The triumphal rehabilitation of the family, taking place simultaneously—what a providential coincidence!—with the rehabilitation of the ruble, is caused by the material and cultural bankruptcy of the state. Instead of openly saying, “We have proven still too poor and ignorant for the creation of socialist relations among men, our children and grandchildren will realize this aim,” the leaders are forcing people to glue together again the shell of the broken family, and not only that, but to consider it, under threat of extreme penalties, the sacred nucleus of triumphant socialism. It is hard to measure with the eye the scope of this retreat.
Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed (Chapter 7. Family, Youth and Culture) (1936)
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p.s. Hey. Okay, yesterday's post didn't seem to get you guys in the holiday spirit at all, so let's try this: Happy 4th of July weekend from Alan, and from me too, I guess, since I'm the one who chose his post's timing. Seriously, you guys in the US have a basic grasp of why the place is the sometimes great, sometimes awful and fucked up context whose birthday you're celebrating or not on Sunday. But I bet you don't half or more of the information in Alan's fascinating and enlightening post, and if you read it with attention to the details, I think you might find your knowledge will be as upgraded as mine was when I received it in the mail and had my advance look. In any case, thank you a lot, Alan, and thanks to all of you out there who give the post your focus and comments. As I mentioned, I'm off to Avignon for twelve days tomorrow morning, and I'm taking the blog with me. When you next see me and a new post on Monday, I'll hopefully be able to give you a sense of how the blog will look and work for the duration, because, at the moment, I have no clue how smoothly or not things will run around here between now and my return to Paris on the 16th. Fingers crossed. ** Misanthrope, Wait, shouldn't the punchline of that joke be JUSTIN BIEBER!!!!!!!!!! Or am I missing something? Ha ha. Oh, Little Show can bother me on Facebook if he wants. I'm hardly there anyway, and my wall might as well be a toilet stall's. Just yesterday some 'friend' used my wall to hard sell his book, and then another 'friend' told him to stop posting spam there, and then the book promoting 'friend' returned to tell the other guy he's ugly. So, anything goes. ** Scunnard, Hey! Thanks, man. Oh, I got your FB message, but it may take me a bit to respond since I'm scrambling my way into a state of internet semi-limbo. Soonish though, one way or another. ** Oscar B, So, you have a little internet over there at least. Very good. Dude, it was so hot here yesterday, it was totally nightmarish. Thankfully, today it's pouring rain and as cool outside as the veritable cucumber. Unlike in Avignon where it's 40 degrees in the shade, I hear. Whine whine. Enjoy jolly olde to the max. ** David, Hello, sir. ** Steve Lafreniere, Hey, Steve! Oh, okay. I wonder if he's the someone who's been calling and calling and calling me from a blocked number -- I avoid blocked numbers -- and who has never left a me single identifying voice mail. That would solve that nagging mystery. In any case, I'll write to him the second I finish the p.s. I leave for Avignon early tomorrow morning, so it might be tricky. Here's hoping. Thanks a lot, Steve. You very, very good, I hope? ** David Ehrenstein, Gloria Stuart must have those longevity genes that scientists supposedly discovered the other day. I wonder if genes can be transplanted. Probably not, right? I want those genes. Colt pretty much bit the dust when Jim French sold it. It's been Colt in name only for years now. The loss is a backdated one. ** Stephen, My yesterday was like your yesterday except without the old guy, which I guess doesn't make my yesterday like yours very much at all. I was talking about the heat not the hotness, ha ha. Glad you both survived and presumably got home. No, that's not your fate, man. It's just memoir fodder. ** Stan_cz, Well, the English word 'ladies' is a bit of a rarity over here. That rarity is what'll get the most chuckles, I reckon. God, if only Avignon's climate was destined to soothe. Like I told Oscar, the forecast says 37 to 40 degrees every motherfucking day. Jesus Christ. As Alan said, that Craigslist job offer has scam just oozing out of it. ** _Black_Acrylic, Dude, Holland, Fuckin' A! I'm so back into the WC now. Now that Ghana's gone, I second your nomination, and, since I'm the boss around here by default, let's just go ahead and make it official. If Holland wins, so do we. ** Alan, Hey. An in-person profound thank you for the post. I'm honored by it, I truly am. Peter Schjeldahl and I were really close friends for a long time. He was immensely helpful and supportive of my critic/ journalist side. I published a great book of poems by him via Little Caesar called 'The Brute'. We had a kind of bad falling out in the early 90s, unfortunately. 'Twin Peaks' joke, yep. ** Colin, Hey. Me too on the itchy thing. Except I was as itchy to arrange them in my apartment like sculptures as I was to light them with a match. Schjeldah's a wonderful poet. I think he basically quit writing poems in the mid-80s, which is a shame. I wish I had any copies at all left of 'The Brute', the book of his poetry that I published through Little Caesar. It was his last poetry book and his very best, I think. Anyway, if I had any, I'd send you one. ** Steevee, Isn't that kind of unusual for an actor in a film to want to edit the film? Did you have an agreement about that or something? Is it possible to let him try editing it with the understanding that his edited version would only go public with your permission? 'Cos, if so, maybe it would be interesting to see what he wants to do just as an exercise or something? No, I don't know Lorn, but I'm intrigued enough by your characterization to hunt his stuff down. Thanks, Steve. ** Changeling, Oh, darn, my liasing with your partner was supposed to be surprise. He was going to light a huge firework tomorrow, and I was going to pop out and award you the Booker Prize. Oh, well, ha ha. Yeah, being a master is serious, time consuming business, I think. That's kind of why I suspect those m/s flirtations never get past the jerking off halfway across the world phase. Songs from 1978, wow. Do you mean good songs or just songs that represent that year to people? 'Cos in the latter instance, 1978 was the year that all those 'Saturday Night Fever' songs by the Bee Gees were inescapable, for instance. You probably know this already, but here's a giant Wikipedia list of 1978 songs. This might or might not be of use, but here's the not bad American critic Robert Christgau's 'best of 1978' essay and top 30 albums list. And now ... Everyone, Changeling seeks recommendations for songs from the year 1978 for a project he's working on. Can anybody here help him out? Thanks! Have a weekend to remember in the good way, man. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Dude, your head-encased hell continues? This is very bad. I guess there's no reason why the doctor wouldn't tell you the scoop, so I hope he's right that the shit will fade away, but still. It just isn't fair. Eardrum bulging ... is that some fairly normal thing? Why would it bulge? Who knows, right? Jeez, I really hope you're feeling significantly more at ease by Monday. Avoid fireworks, obviously. You sounded extraordinarily not bitter and dull considering what you're going through. This summer movie season really is the pits. My blockbuster addiction is kind of fucked. It's so fucked that yesterday I was even thinking, well, if my choice is doomed to be 'The A-Team' or 'The Last Airbender' or 'Shrek 4' or 'Knight and Day' or ... etc., maybe 'Eclipse' wouldn't be too intolerable. Considering that my fan is only my fan because it was literally the only brand of fan left on the store shelves in Paris, and considering it has an option where you can blow 'perfume' as well as air, it's not bad at all. My day was a stinker because it was so miserably hot that you couldn't do hardly anything. I couldn't work on my novel, the blog, anything computer-oriented. I couldn't get it up enough to go anywhere either via the horrendously hot metro or a sweat-producing walk, etc. So, what did I do? I can hardly remember. I did my pre-trip laundry. That was a little heat producing torture session. I paid rent. I answered a few emails. I had an orange juice rather my usual coffee with Kiddiepunk in the cafe inside the Gare de l'Est because it was magically not that hot in there. I had to write a little statement about what it was like to act in the Christophe Honore film for the movie's press release. A French journalist asked if I would be willing to be double-interviewed with the American writer Vanessa Place who has a book coming out here, and I said yes 'cos she's great and it would be interesting to interact with her. I also said yes to another solo French interview. It rained, but that only made the heat worse. I watched part of Nadal beating Murray at the French Open or whatever they call it now. The day dragged into night, and I eventually kind of slept thanks to the aforementioned fan. There you go. I'm hoping for a weekend report from you that feels brighter on your end, although, of course, any report from you is a pleasure. ** Nb, Pony indeed. Good one. Everyone, courtesy of nb, Pony. Excellent weekend to you, drill included and hopefully transcended. ** No more teenagekicks, Ha ha, my title has gone viral! Well, okay, GbV's title has gone viral with or without me. Thanks! That's some smile he's got going on there. Armfuls of blonde will do that to you. Everyone, via no more teenagekicks, Caption ** Sypha, Testament to the restorative powers of the Gaga, clearly. Your fellow gaga Gaga fan Jonathan Capdevielle didn't know where the word 'gaga' came from. They don't use it over here. He thought her name was an homage to the Queen song 'Radio Gaga'. But maybe it is. ** JW Veldhoen, Good timing on your new Facebook Russian friends and the post this weekend, eh? You can surprise and dazzle them even more than you would have normally. Cocks' very modernity may be the root cause of their eventual extinction? ** Bollo, Hey. You can't buy fireworks here either. It sucks 'cos I bet French fireworks would look pretty cool. Oh, those ash sprouting fireworks used to just be called 'Snakes'. We called them 'Cat Poo' when we were kids. They might be called '(something) Snakes' these days, I bet. It really cooled off here today. I hope our clouds and rain are stretching all the way to Dublin. ** Right. Spend some of your 4th of July weekend with Alan's verbal/ pictorial feast, please. I don't know precisely when or how lengthily I'll be back here on Monday, but I'll be back here for sure, and I'll 'see' you then.
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