Brilliant. Iain Sinclair.
An excerpt:
The scam of scams was always the Olympics: Berlin in 1936 to Beijing in
2008. Engines of regeneration. Orgies of lachrymose nationalism. War by
other means. Warrior-athletes watched, from behind dark glasses, by men in
suits and uniforms. The pharmaceutical frontline. Rogue Californian chemists
running their eye-popping, vein-clustered, vest-stripping robots against
degendered state laboratory freaks. Bearded ladies and teenage girls who
never have periods. Medals returned by disgraced drug cheats to be passed on
to others who weren't caught, that time. The Millennium Dome fiasco was a
low-rent rehearsal. The holy grail for blue-sky thinkers was the
sport-transcends-politics Olympiad, the five-hooped golden handcuffs, the
smoke rings behind which deals could be done for casinos and malls: with
corporate sponsorship, flag-waving and infinitely elastic budgets (any
challenge an act of naysaying treason).
2008/8/22 Roger Day <[log in to unmask]>
> http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n12/sinc01_.html
>
> The razing of East London by Ian MacEwan.
>
> --
> My Stuff: http://www.badstep.net/
> "I began to warm and chill
> to objects and their fields"
> Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
>
|