Category: words

In 1983, Michael Crichton told Merv Griffin that, “When you type, the words appear on the screen … you can move around on the screen, change what you’ve written, pull blocks of text, put them elsewhere. You have complete freedom.” His disbelieving glee was shared by many, but some writers reacted differently.

Adam Kirsch: What could be more cruel than Dante’s Inferno, with its sadistic vision of divine justice? … Art will always exceed ethics, including political ethics, in the same way that the possible exceeds the desirable.”
Zoë Heller: “If we couldn’t find anything to delight or instruct us in the works of sexists, racists, anti-Semites and people who believe in the divine right of kings, our literary canon would barely fill a medium-size handbag.”

“Listen for this phrase and you’ll hear it everywhere, inside and outside politics. This reflex to hedge every statement as a feeling or a hunch is most common among millennials. But I hear it almost as often among Generation Xers and my own colleagues in academia. As in so many things, the young are early carriers of a broad cultural contagion.”

“Like sixty years ago, much of the public rhetoric about race is devoted to explaining to an incurious white public, in rudimentary terms, the contours of institutional racism.”

“When I suggest that we may soon see the end of even defining whether a work is a short story, novella or novel, Earls says for writers the distinction can still be meaningful.”

“We consider that the Legislature should take some steps to put a stop to the inflammable and shocking literature that is sold, which in our opinion leads to many a dreadful crime being carried out.”

“Fitzgerald left St. Paul many times, but St. Paul never left him.”

“The library board in Newfoundland and Labrador announced sweeping changes to its services Wednesday, adopting a regional library model which will see 54 branches close in the next two years. The board met Tuesday to discuss how best to deal with a $1-million loss in its annual budget, a cut announced in the provincial budget.”

“The budget outlines a new 10 per cent tax on book sales in Newfoundland and Labrador, which would be added to the current five per cent federal GST. … If implemented, Newfoundland and Labrador would become the first province in Canada to have its own tax on books.”

“Through three decades of literary response, Chernobyl has undermined the sort of authoritative depiction that might bring closure. But something closed can be forgotten. The finest works express profound doubts about the power of language to absorb a disaster of this magnitude, and so continually reopen it to new ways of being remembered.”