Free The Digested Twenty-first Century by John Crace Page B

trenches flopping like Feydeau’s manatee, if Feydeau had had a manatee. Had they exploded then Stanley might still be alive, though he might be losing his hair.
    The young girl stared at him pityingly. I used to work here when it was a psychiatric hospital. A lot of patients say that. No, I did work here … the omniscient God separated from the world by Plexiglass, Tidddly-iddl-ighty. Of course you did and I expect you left your umbrella heren’all. Come and have a look at the new flats. Sir Albert … Palaeolithic Mekon … hadn’t wanted to know his sister was still alive. I told you he wouldn’t, and now she wasn’t. Returned to oculogyric crisis. Nothing, stasis … Nothing will come of nothing … The tiger’s free, the kangaroo, I’m an ape man ... War, psychiatry, a nihilistic, autodidactic mess of rotting corpses … He’d said that already, but sometimes it bore repeating just to defray the onanism. You’ll never guess what, Guv? I ‘ad that Rihanna in the back of me cab. Left ‘er umbrella.
    Digested read, digested: Psy-Fi.
NW
by Zadie Smith (2012)
    Four gardens. North London estate. Redheaded. I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.
    I am the sole
    I am the
    Deep. Doorbell! She pushes her way in.
    – It’s Shar. Remember me? Gimmethirty quid for me bredren.
    Leah thinks she does remember her. Back from Brayton days in Willesden. She knows it’s probs a scam but she gives her the money. It’s what sistas do, innit?
    Michel gives her hell.
    – You’re Irish, not a sista. She ripped you off.
    No matter. Paperworkpaperworkpaperwork. Looks pretty on the page, is it? Almost as if it meant something.
    Maybe she could
get away with writing a
whole
sentence that
looked
a
bit
like a tree.
    There had been an attraction between Michel – Meshell – and Leah from the start. Anal before vaginal. Now they lived together. Near but not on the estate. There was a difference. Big difference. A long way apart.
    – We’re going to dinner at Natalie and Frank’s tonight.
    – Does that mean we’re going to have to talk a lot about multi-culturalism and neo-modernism?
    – ’Fraid so. But as long as you remember to name-drop Kierkegaard and Barthes you’ll be fine.
    Leah does this and then she does that and sometimes she thinks this and sometimes she thinks that but what she really knows is that she is on Zadie’s home patch so she’d better go along with any old bollocks – shame about the dog dying – and let’s just hope that Michel doesn’t notice she’s still taking the pill.
    Felix dropped in on his old man, Lloyd.
    ‘Wassup, blud. You long, or what, is it?’
    ‘Your father is asking how you are and why you are late,’ said Lloyd’s neighbour Tom, who had lived on the estate since the 1970s and whose sole purpose was to supply simultaneous translation.
    Felix barely noticed his section had proper quotation marks as he was on his way to Soho to meet Grace, his trustafarian junkie ex.
    ‘Do you want some coke, babes?’ she asked.
    ‘I don do dat stuff nah more. I’m inta films n’ shit more.’
    ‘Then just go down on me as I’m having my period.’
    Felix didn’t quite know why he had done that. Out of his comfort zone. Far too Islington. Or Queens. If he knew where New York was. Back to Willesden. Home. Carnival. Whoops. Ironic that Nathan mugged and killed him when he wasn’t loaded or nuffink.
    1. Keisha and Leah had been friends on the estate. 2. Then they weren’t. 3. Then they were again. 4. Keisha didn’t know why she had to have everything listed in numbers. 5. On reflection, perhaps she did. 6. Sometimestimegoesveryfast. 7. S ome tim esitgo esver yslowly. 8. IS IT TIME FOR SOME CAPITALS? 9. What would James Joyce think about a black girl becoming middle-class? 10. Leah gave Keisha a vibrator and then Keisha went out with Rodney who was a nice boy. 11. Not a baaad boy. 12. Keisha changed her name to Natalie when she became a lawyer and married Frank and hadtwo