I'm After A Snake And Please God

The First World War In So Many Ways Shaped The 20th Century And Really Remade Our World For The Worse.

In Canada, The U.s. And Most Of Europe It May Be Easy To Take Political Stands, This Is Something For Which You Can Be Forced To Pay With Your Life, Or Your Freedom, In Many Other Parts Of The World, From Iran To Russia To Pakistan To China.

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.

How Many Really Great Writers Are There Who Are Totally Non-political? You Can Hear The French Revolution In The Poetry Of [percy Bysshe] Shelly And [john] Wordsworth; You Can Sense The Vast Inequalities Of Tsarist Russia In [anton] Chekhov And [lev] Tolstoy.

The Late Nadine Gordimer In South Africa, For Example, Had A Wonderful Ability To Get Her Country's Injustices And Contradictions Down On Paper. Ditto For Her Countryman The Great Playwright Athol Fugard.