How Many Really Great Writers Are There

Speaking Of Germany In 1933, I Don't Think You Can Remove Yourself From Politics When, In So Many Countries - The United States, Poland, Hungary, And Many Others - You've Got Politicians In Power Or Vying For Power Who Are Taking Tactics And Elements Of Their Appeal From The Playbook Of Fascism.

It Sure Is A Rising Tide, And We Have A Particularly Nasty Exemplar Of It In The U.s., In Donald Trump.

One Of My Favourite Contemporary Fiction Writers Is A Texan, Ben Fountain. His Extraordinary Novel, Billy Lynn's Long Half-time Walk, All Takes Place Within The Half-time Show At A Dallas Cowboys Football Game. No One Has Better Summed Up The American Appetite For Spectacle, The Link Between Sports And Politics, And The Absolute Madness Of George W. Bush's Iraq War.

And Yet The World We Live In-its Divisions And Conflicts, Its Widening Gap Between Rich And Poor, Its Seemingly Inexplicable Outbursts Of Violence-is Shaped Far Less By What We Celebrate And Mythologize Than By The Painful Events We Try To Forget. Leopold's Congo Is But One Of Those Silences Of History.

Someday, I Have No Doubt, The Dead From Today's Wars Will Be Seen With A Similar Sense Of Sorrow At Needless Loss And Folly As Those Millions Of Men Who Lie In The Cemeteries Of France And Belgium - And Tens Of Millions Of Americans Will Feel A Similar Revulsion For The Politicians And Generals Who Were So Spendthrift With Others' Lives.