News (October)

What news this October? Shall we be glad of November? Franz Kafka observed that though we don’t wish to read the news, we do anyway, drawn back to it against our own reason, again to go through all the same reactions. The day the Great War broke out in 1914 Kafka wrote in his diary: “Germany has declared war on Russia. Went swimming in the afternoon.” “I read the news today, oh boy.” The English Army had just won the War when John Lennon was a boy of four. Like us, he was already preparing for a lifetime of news.