Arnon Grunberg

Objects

Violence

A very funny article in yesterday’s Times about Gordon Brown.
Sarah Lyall writes: ‘Stories of Mr. Brown’s poor interpersonal skills have wafted around Westminster for years. But Mr. Rawnsley’s book, “The End of the Party,” which was excerpted in The Observer of London on Sunday, lays it on particularly thick. It portrays Mr. Brown as paranoid, bullying, chaotic and exhausted. It says he is prone to making profanity-laced tirades, shoving his employees, stabbing the upholstery of his limousine with a pen, smashing office equipment and using unsecured objects as projectiles.
“Over the years I’ve had all sorts of things thrown at me — newspapers, pens, Coke cans,” one aide is quoted as saying. An applicant for a Downing Street job says in the book that he hastily withdrew his application when asked in his interview whether he was prepared to enter a workplace full of “ ‘extreme physical abuse’ and violence done to objects.”’

I have to admit that I committed violence to objects more than once.

Best sentence of the article: "In an effort at self-humanization, Mr. Brown has occasionally positioned his mouth into a smile."

That's politics: vain efforts at self-humanization.