Sofi Oksanen's Stalinist Mythology
The immense success of Sofi Oksanen's novel "Purge" astonishes me. The book falls into the same category as the Stalinist books of my childhood, only the heroes and anti-heroes have changed their roles. My objection to the book is that it pretends to be a realistic story about life in Soviet Estonia in the second half of the 20th century, and seems to have been accepted as such in Europe and America.
Sofi Oksanen, who has no direct experience of the time and events she describes, has taken parts of our life, sewing them together according to some age-old rules of ideological-mythological literature, and is now selling it in the West. She is selling something that pretends to be our life, but is not. I do not want anybody to take my life away from me and sell an adulterated version of it to unknowing people abroad.
http://jaankaplinski.blogspot.com/2010/08/sofi-oksanen-and-stalin-award.html
Turning radicals into eunuchs
The United States has a startling ability to take its most angry, edgy radicals and turn them into cuddly eunuchs. The process begins the moment they die. Mark Twain is remembered as a quipster forever floating down the Mississippi River at sunset, while his polemics against the violent birth of the American empire lie unread and unremembered.Martin Luther King is remembered for his prose-poetry about children holding hands on a hill in Alabama, but few recall that he said the US government was "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." But perhaps the greatest act of historical castration is of Jack London. This man was the most-read revolutionary Socialist in American history, agitating for violent overthrow of the government and the assassination of political leaders -- and he is remembered now for writing a cute story about a dog.
Writers will have to change the way they write
"Over the last couple of years, I've really noticed if I sit down with a book, after a few paragraphs, I'll ask: You know, where's the links? Where's the e-mail? Where's all the stuff going on?" says writer Nicholas Carr. The internet is training us to read in a distracted and disjointed way, he argues. But does that mean writers will have to change the way they write to capture the attention of an audience accustomed to this new way of reading? Carr thinks the answer is yes.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122026529
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