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But by far the worst of it was that British parents thought this all a suitable spectacle for their 6- or 8-year-old children, which many had brought with them. It was as if the parents wanted to induct their children into this vulgarity, as being something good. It was vulgarity erected into an ideology.

There is a proper and necessary place for vulgarity, when it punctures the self-importance, complacency, or censoriousness of the respectable. There is also an innocent, unselfconscious type of vulgarity that is often charming. But this kind of commercialized vulgarity is quite without redeeming features, and I return to the innocence of my notebooks with relief.

“I was having hallucinations of being a gangster,” “I used to be an ex-alcoholic,” “Life is rubbish,” “They’re telling lies on me, they’re like vampires sucking your health from you.” Or a little snatch of dialogue, in which I speak first:

“What does your wife say?”

“She just wants me back to normal.”

“And what is normal?”

“I make promises and then break them.”

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