Utopia Avenue

by David Mitchell

The landlady pulls a cord hanging from the ceiling. She takes a card from her writing bureau: BEDSIT TO LET—BLACKS & IRISH NEED NOT APPLY—ENQUIRE WITHIN.

“Over ’ere!” The heckler waves. “Get a fackin’ haircut!” Shit, thinks Dean, here comes Brighton Poly part two. Jasper peers closer. “What? And look like you?”

That’s a Mick Jagger line

Bea and Jude spent three days on Elf’s outfit: an American Indian squaw look with a tasseled suede, embroidered headband and glass beads.

Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, and Cindy Birdsong make every other act look amateurish. Us included. Their poise, dark skin, and silver gowns are perfect for black-and-white screens. Jasper—and most of Great Britain, he guesses—is entranced by their minimal choreography, how they embody the song, serve it, mean it. No other song on the show—“Itchycoo Park,” Traffic’s “Hole in My Shoe,” the Move’s “Flowers in the Rain,” and the Flowerpot Men’s “Let’s Go to San Francisco”—struck Jasper as believed in by anyone, from writer to punter.

“Before that cricket match, I was the only one living in my head. Now there are two. Even when Knock Knock isn’t knocking, I know he’s there. I know that sounds crazy. I can’t prove I’m not, I suppose. But can you prove I am?”

“If you believe I decide a major commercial decision on a dice, you’re living in the Cloud Cuckoo Land. No. In a padded cell in the Cloud Cuckoo Land. Listen—”

“The best pop songs are art,” says Jasper. “Making art is already a political act. The artist rejects the dominant version of the world. The artist proposes a new version. A subversion. It’s there in the etymology. Tyrants are right to fear art.”

Plato detourned

“Guinness tastes to thirsty people…” began Mary. “…how blood tastes to vampires,” said Venus. “It’s the iron.”

“Seriously, threesomes don’t come along that often, and yer mojo needs a workout.

“There’s lots of Bs down south. Brighton, Bristol, Bournemouth, Bedford. They’re bastards. They all merge into one big ‘Birmstolmouthford.’ ”

About things you’re liable to read in the Bible.

Porgy n Bess

“My Dutch grandfather used to say, ‘If you don’t know what to do, do nothing for eight days.’ ” Dean asked, “Why eight?” “Less than eight is haste. More than eight is procrastination. Eight days is long enough for the world to shuffle the deck and deal you another hand.”

“Black Irish”—a descendant of Spanish sailors from the shipwrecked Armada fleet, “though that’s a yarn used to cover a multitude of sins.”

patients with diagnoses of schizophrenia who reported visits by an entity who ameliorates the psychosis. Only last May we held a conference in Boston on ‘Autonomous Healer Personae’—AHPs.

“We think we are a One, but you and I know an ‘I’ is a ‘Many.’ There’s Nice Guy Me. Psychopath Me. Wife-beater Me. Narcissist Me. Saint Me. I’m-all-right-Jack Me. Suicidal Me. The Me Who Dares Not Speak My Name. Dark Globe Me. I is an Empire of ‘I’s.”

unwritten contracts have as much fine print as the written variety.

“I’m in no mad rush.” “Good for you. The word ‘faster’ is becoming a synonym of ‘better.’ As if the goal of human evolution is to be a sentient bullet.”

“I’ve never associated America with violence,” says Elf. “Violence is on every page of our history.”

AN AMERICAN MOON is wedged between two skyscrapers, like a nickel fallen down a crack.

“You have a way with dogs.” I told it to go away. In Mongolian. “Why would a Dutch dog understand Mongolian?” Don’t underestimate dogs.

Peacocks wander aimlessly underneath the orange tree.

Guinevere by David Crosby

Pigpen, “he actually pays bands what he promises to pay. There’s none of this ‘We didn’t make as much on the door as we hoped, so here’s a beer and a ball of dope, now piss off’