Pfired! 
Daniel Soar
When in doubt, toss a coin. If you really can’t decide which alternative is preferable, if everything seems equal and you don’t care a damn, it can’t matter what you settle on. Or so you would think. But to flip a coin – literally or figuratively – and abide by the result whatever the consequences would be an inhuman act. If you’ve ever tried coin-flipping you’ll know that there’s a good chance you won’t accept the outcome: ‘Heads? But I can’t!’ Having been confronted with an imminent imagined possibility that you can’t countenance, you will have discovered what it is you wanted to do – or at least will have learned that what you do matters very much indeed.
Subscribers to the print edition can log in to view the entire article. For information about subscribing to the London Review of Books click here. This article is available for purchase online. Buy this article.
From the LRB letters page: [ 9 February 2006 ] Randy Cohen.
Other articles by this contributor:
Bile, Blood, Bilge, Mulch · What’s got into Martin Amis?
At Tate Modern · Jeff Wall
The Art-House Crowd · Svetislav Basara’s fictions
print layout
tell a friend