What the red haired girl in this novel might say if she were to read this manuscript:
“This really should be dedicated in loving memory of certain Republican presidents of the last quarter of the twentieth century and their fellow fascist followers who, by thinking they invoked God in justifying their cause, actually believed they were totally different than the worst Communist followers who invoked Marx to justify their cause. Sorry. Totalitarianism is totalitarianism, no matter if it’s right or left.”
What the author might say about this manuscript if he were so inclined:
“To the generation of the seventies and eighties and—alas—the nineties. There are no words for the ache and the despair. It is so sad. May this give laughter to the tears”
She sees nothing and hears nothing; but all the same she loosens her apron-strings and waves her apron to waft me away. She succeeds, unluckily. My bucket has all the virtues of a good steed except powers of resistance, which it has not; it is too light; a woman’s apron can make it fly through the air.
“You bad woman!” I shout back, while she, turning into the shop, half-contemptuous, half-reassured, flourishes her fist in the air. “You bad woman! I begged you for a shovelful of the worst coal and you would not give me it.” And with that I ascend into the regions of the ice mountains and am lost forever.
The Bucket Rider
Franz Kafka