Read the opening lines from a (2011) book and assess whose condition does it BEST describes:

 

"A relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing. It might involve food, or a kind of love; it might be a fantasy of the good life, or a political project. It might rest on something simpler, too, like a new habit that promises to induce in you an improved way of being. These kinds of optimistic relation are not inherently cruel. They become cruel only when the object that draws your attachment actively impedes the aim that brought you to it initially."

 

Charles and Nonie left _________ alone when it came to her personal life. That’s not to say that Charles failed to notice that ________ had many boyfriends, and that she had a type, which he described as “unusually appealing but highly unstable” characters. Many of the men she dated were older, and many were writers; she seemed attracted to people with life experience, intellect, and ambition. After her relationship with Bobro ended, ______ moved back into the basement apartment at her parents’ house. Charles’s interest in _______’s personal life was piqued when Richard Neville came along. Neville, a hippie with a dark moptop, moved to London in 1966 from Sydney, Australia, where he’d launched the counterculture magazine Oz. The debut issue had included an interview with an abortion doctor and an article on chastity belts; by the fourth issue, newsstands were refusing to sell the magazine and printers refusing to print it. Neville was charged with obscenity twice, avoiding jail the second time by posting bail. After reading about “Swinging London” in Time magazine, Neville decided to move and publish Oz from there. Writer Anthony Haden-Guest introduced Neville to ______ at a party in 1969, when she was around twenty. They kept bumping into each other at social gatherings and he and _______ fell into an aair, often disappearing to her basement apartment at her parents’ house after they’d all dined together. Neville continued using Oz to attract press through controversy and shock value. The cover of an issue guest-edited by teenagers featuring two naked women led to another obscenity charge, as well as one for conspiracy to corrupt public morals, the penalty for which was life in prison. In the end, the Oz team was acquitted of public corruption but guilty of obscenity. After almost a week in prison, Neville was released on appeal. Charles asked ________ to bring him over. Many years later, she would allude to the encounter as one of the worst dates of her life. “We had an extremely uncomfortable exchange, but at the end of it, my dad said to the young man, ‘I know you’re interested in politics—would you like to go to America and cover the upcoming election campaigns?’” she said. “And he, of course, was stunned, and immediately said yes. And he left the next day and I never saw him again. So, my dad was quite cunning.”

Relate this extract to one of the FOLLOWING!:

 

W.r.t. The quote below from a book by a cultural-historian, answer the following question:

 

Another point to emphasize is that the flâneur embodies many of the thematic tensions of life under conditions of capitalist modernity, such as tensions between individuality and anonymity, belonging and estrangement, or private and public. In this respect, Benjamin’s writings on the flâneur can be understood as addressing broader social and cultural developments than simply the anatomy of a particular urban type. This helps to explain why the flâneur has been pursued and reinterpreted across so many different fields of inquiry, ranging from sociology and ethnography to film and media studies, leading to a rich variety of new incarnations such as the plâneur (aerial flâneur), the driveur (the flâneur driving a car), and, in a more roundabout way, the zonard (disaffected youth of the Parisian banlieues).

 

Carrie is?