A Commonplace Book

Consumption gives us an illusion of autonomy and hence diverts our attention from our lack of control over the goods we produce.

Consumer society channels our needs, desires, and strong emotions into the marketplace.

A new terror has been added to the lonely life of the novelist: Britain's most dreaded literary prize. Writers are now said to be resorting to the use of Latin or three suggestive dots rather than risk a passage that could earn them The Literary Review's Bad Sex Award. [The award is] bestowed on the most pretentious, tasteless, embarrassing, otiose, self-infatuated or redundant description of the sexual act published during the past year. Pornography does not qualify...

Part of the fun is [the author's] ritual reading out of the juicy bits of the competeing entries, to the groans and guffaws of the crowd [at the award ceremony]. The winner then faces another ordeal -- the acceptance speech.

Philip Hook, a director at Sotheby's, won for his second novel, "The Stonebreakers." Hook gracefully thanked the judges for pointing out a weakness in his work, which he promised to remedy by more research. He added a sorry tale of trying to impress a rich and chic Frenchwoman (whose pictures he had hopes of selling) by telling her that he had just won a literary award. When she learned that the honor was for Bad Sex, she observed dryly that there must be a great deal of competition in England for a prize like that.

"I've taught a dozen [Boris] Johnsons," le Carré says. "Eton does something extraordinary. It doesn't teach you to govern. It teaches you to win. That's what it's about."