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A female customer was complaining about the ‘poor selection’ of Tottenham Hotspur books in the shop. ‘Yeah and you should see our section on elephant gynaecology’, I was tempted to say. ‘It’s tiny.’ Which is a bit unfair, perhaps, but we do have four or five Spurs titles, and we’re a general bookshop, not Spurs ’R Us. ‘Bookshops aren’t what they used to be’, muttered another customer on the phone to Jo. However, customers, it seems, are exactly what they used to be. Wankers.
I went to see the film The Lives of Others, a German movie about East Berlin’s secret police, the Stasi. I don’t know much about the workings of the Stasi but it all seemed quite plausible. Then, right at the end, one of the characters walks into a bookshop and the bookseller asks if he’d like his purchase gift-wrapped. Why? Don’t Germans buy books for themselves?
In fact, the only reason he asks this is to give the character a reason to utter the film’s last line: ‘No, this is for me.’ The book he’s buying is dedicated to him, you see, and it’s about him, and really it’s the only thing he’s got out of years and years of working for the Stasi. So, yes, it’s all very moving but what about the bookseller? Isn’t he being exploited here?
The Stasi would never have permitted this.
I was watching this with Lindsey in London. Afterwards, she briefly contemplated taking one of those rickshaw-cycle-things all the way back to Stevenage where she lives, an epic journey which would inevitably become a book, and then a film. We worked it out then and there: the mutual resentment that eventually turns into a bond; the rickshaw-jacking in, say, Hemel Hempstead; the police chase. Meryl Streep would play her and Ryan Gosling could be the driver. Clive Owen can play me giving my account of her actions to an enthralled media: ‘She’s just seen The Lives Of Others. She’d renounced Marxism and was on the lookout for a worker to oppress.’
As soon as I’ve finished my script about the demonically-possessed dishwasher, I’ll be right onto it.
I went to see the film The Lives of Others, a German movie about East Berlin’s secret police, the Stasi. I don’t know much about the workings of the Stasi but it all seemed quite plausible. Then, right at the end, one of the characters walks into a bookshop and the bookseller asks if he’d like his purchase gift-wrapped. Why? Don’t Germans buy books for themselves?
In fact, the only reason he asks this is to give the character a reason to utter the film’s last line: ‘No, this is for me.’ The book he’s buying is dedicated to him, you see, and it’s about him, and really it’s the only thing he’s got out of years and years of working for the Stasi. So, yes, it’s all very moving but what about the bookseller? Isn’t he being exploited here?
The Stasi would never have permitted this.
I was watching this with Lindsey in London. Afterwards, she briefly contemplated taking one of those rickshaw-cycle-things all the way back to Stevenage where she lives, an epic journey which would inevitably become a book, and then a film. We worked it out then and there: the mutual resentment that eventually turns into a bond; the rickshaw-jacking in, say, Hemel Hempstead; the police chase. Meryl Streep would play her and Ryan Gosling could be the driver. Clive Owen can play me giving my account of her actions to an enthralled media: ‘She’s just seen The Lives Of Others. She’d renounced Marxism and was on the lookout for a worker to oppress.’
As soon as I’ve finished my script about the demonically-possessed dishwasher, I’ll be right onto it.
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