Mod apocalypse
Sir: Absent from one's native shores for nearly seven years now, one's early impression gained from the London papers—without positing any essential nexus between one's expatriation and the decline—that England was rapidly becom- ing insane has been succeeded by the dolorous certainty that progress has passed one by; and one seeks to recover the lost ground. Alas, des- perate doubts, difficulties and problems obstruct the laggard, which, however, your serious heb- domadal, so splendidly 'with it,' is admirably qualified to solve. May I mention one?
It is noted that the British press, with some assistance from a person named Allsop and from a certain Philip, has (at least for Great Britain and Northern Ireland) abolished God (though the Devil, it seems, is still showing fight), and that critical attention is now ex- clusively concerned with that nobler and more potent figure, Man. However, a sub-species exists, it appears, with a high priority for ex- tinction in the wake of his Maker. I refer to the bourgeois (always referred to in the French language in deference to General de Gaulle). This despicable creature evidently has its days numbered, and, to judge from your critic's- re- view of Jean-Luc Godard's film Weekend (12 July), its end is to be, not to put too fine a point on it, sticky; but this shocking bourgeois, though frequently abused, is never, curiously, defined, nor are its obviously hateful vices de- scribed with any exactitude.
Since I have an uneasy feeling that I and some of my dearest friends, unversed in the writings of S. Marcuse and deplorably inexpert in the matter of ceremonial rapings, may be com- prised in the hateful category I wonder if some of your superior intellects will aid the destined victims to identify themselves so that, fore- warned, they may make, like the person named Allsop, a dignified end?
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