The Right To Not Remain Silent Steve recently s…
The Right To Not Remain Silent
Steve recently sent me this article written by Mark Crispin Miller about the reception of his book The Bush Dyslexicon, which is a collection and analysis of Dubya’s greatest sayings. Unsurprisingly, Miller received a fair amount of hate mail and his article is an excellent summation not only of the ludicrous reactions his book sparked but also the far more prevalent problem of going against the status quo in any matter intellectually. Post 9/11, there’s been a massive resurgence of a complete refusal to question the party line for fear of being seen anti-American - indeed, any dissent seems to immediately get labelled as automatically pro-terrorist. (The ongoing letters row in the London Review of Books is a good example). As Miller notes, there is an increasing move “not to broaden the debate but to abort it”. It strikes me that this isn’t just confined to the thorny political matters revolving around the post September world - it’s an attitude that seems to be permeating virtually every discussion of importance, whether it be social, political or cultural. The lack of open-mindedness to entertain other ideas besides the ones we start out with is the greatest danger - isn’t that, after all, why we read books in the first place?
Links
42opus is a “digital journal of art and literature” - it’s all in Flash, so it looks very slick but takes a while to load. WritersDisplay aims to bring writers and publishers together by showcasing writers’ work for publishers to evaluate. The site seems to be trying to help with the legwork of getting publishers to look at writer’s work, and so charge $11 Australian dollars a month - could be worth a go.
And a techy question too - does anyone out there know where I could get a free link-building system like the one 3AM Magazine uses, provided by LinksManager.com - I don’t have the cash to pay for it. Answers to the usual address.
Other SpikeMagazine.com posts of interest:
- When Authors Attack Interesting article in Wire…
- Repetition again, part 2
- Journalists writing about books about writing
- A Nice Margin
- Novel Ideas
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