At one point, he seemed to sense that he was making the wrong impression on a Western journalist who he reckoned might be keen to find the next Facebook.

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Though the sometimes indolent ways of the British upper classes served as his muse, his writing gave the impression that he embraced the immense, and in a very real sense, the anti-conservative changes wrought by Thatcherism.

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In the next, he would reject traditional artists' tools in favor of found objects, black tar paper (textured and pebbly and quite iridescent, giving the impression of a midnight sky) or sentimental postcards, eliminating, in a sense, all traces of technique and skill--and even of the artist (some of the "objects" were assembled by carpenters).

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