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20100810

would to that this 'twere so


Posted by Ben Varkentine

2 comments:

  1. Quinty8/15/10, 10:45 AM

    A few decades ago I read everything I could get ahold of by Kurt Vonnegut. It may have taken two or three weeks to go through all his books, liking some more than others. Sensing, though, he was on "our" side.

    So Vonnegut came across back then as a cultural icon, the truth telling writer as the lonely outsider. A unique character. An honest voice in a mass public media culture driven by ambition and greed. And no small amount of irrational artificiality. The voice of the writer who is applauded, but not taken too seriously, since, after all, there is a defined established niche in our culture for such eccentrics too. Gore Vidal fits in. Noam Chomsky. Many others. And while they enjoy the honor of being nationally important and respected nobody much takes them too seriously. Or pays attention to them. In today’s world, it seems, the latter (the nation’s image definers) appear to have won. The media world's depiction of reality has outpaced the honest writer’s. Best selling books are mere marketing today. Are there any "serious" novelists left?

    So is it possible Vonnegut will live only because he is taught in schools? Not because there are millions of new young people coming of age in the world who wander the shelves of bookstores looking for a good book? For good fiction? Something they can believe in? Or are they going elsewhere for this? And, if so, where?

    你的部落格很棒,我期待更新喔.

    You have a point there.

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  2. jazzolog8/17/10, 4:37 AM

    Yes well, if you click the little blue dots you'll see what the point is. Ordinarily, in my duties as official custodian of The Wulfshead (you didn't think I could afford all this booze, did you? you may have heard of people who have to work off their tabs) I would have gotten in here to clean up that mess of spam. Last week of vacation and I apologize for being a bit preoccupied.

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