‘Smoking cigarettes has become the only element of real freedom in my day-to-day existence.’
The problem is, it’s just not enough to live by the rules. Sure, you manage to live by them. Sometimes it’s tight, extremely tight, but on the whole you manage. Your tax papers are up to date. Your invoices paid on time. You never go out without your identity card (and the special little wallet …
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‘Feelings can be very obscure but numbers never lie.’
Kevin Brazil on metrics, obsession and fitness.
‘An intense workout is an ecstasy of punishment packaged as self-improvement.’
Mary Wellesley on exercise, ritual and Barry’s Bootcamp.
‘I was not good at sports because I would not do sports because I did not have the body for sports because I would not do sports.’
Saba Sams on girlhood, embodiment and avoiding sports.
‘Following United rarely brings me any great joy and most often it depresses me. If I could disengage, I would.’
Jonny Thakkar on Manchester United.
‘I deployed my body against an opponent like a blunt and effective instrument.’
John Patrick McHugh on playing Gaelic football.
‘I’ll never be able to order an œuf mayonnaise in a restaurant without thinking of him – literature can do that, when the description is perfect.’
Michel Houellebecq on his friend Benoît Duteurtre.
‘Finally! I thought. Now I get to work in a big factory. I was fifteen and a half years old. I was a child laborer.’
Xiao Hai on coming of age in the factories of Shenzhen, translated by Tony Hao.
‘When you live underground, among the things you discover is that you are not alone.’
Fiction by Rachel Kushner.
‘Fus was twenty-five, he wasn’t a kid. What was he doing hanging out with fascists?’
An excerpt from What You Need From the Night. Translated from the French by Shaun Whiteside.
‘I went to Enid’s funeral and there was a mole on the coffin and it seemed / aware of us but unconcerned.’
Two poems by Fee Griffin.
