Late Night TV From America

Tonight, I'll be David Foster Wallace and you'll be

Charlie Rose. Waxing lyrical about the addictiveness of entertainment as

the television murmurs, droning in our English ears in its

American language. Because it has its own language, the television. Electric blue

language. The language of laugh tracks and applause that

never seem to punctuate our own lives. Our lives

are ones of shouts. Cold Novembers with no

lecky on the meter. Run round the shop would you,

love, and stick a fiver on that, it'll have to last the month. But I remember

the only light in the dark room being the

television, and the only other noise coming from

downstairs, but we don't mention it. We don't mention

that we can hear her crying. That we heard those

paint-peeling, holes get put in the wall. That his love is a yellow thing,

with a dying liver, because tonight

I am David Foster Wallace and you are Charlie Rose and turn up the television.

There is only one language we know.