When Terrorism Strikes, Divisive Anger Is A

In A World Of Intrusive Technology, We Must Engage In A Kind Of Struggle If We Wish To Sustain Moments Of Solitude. E-reading Opens The Door To Distraction. It Invites Connectivity And Clicking And Purchasing. The Closed Network Of A Printed Book, On The Other Hand, Seems To Offer Greater Serenity. It Harks Back To A Pre-jacked-in Age. Cloth, Paper, Ink: For These Read Helmet, Cuirass, Shield. They Afford A Degree Of Protection And Make Possible A Less Intermediated, Less Fractured Experience. They Guard Our Aloneness. That Is Why I Love Them, And Why I Read Printed Books Still.

Novel Writing Is Solitary Work.

Well, One Thing That Has Changed Is The Number Of People Killed By Terrorists In Pakistan. Civilians Killed Has Gone Down Really Quite Dramatically. There Was A Newspaper Article Here About A Month Ago That Got Big Headlines Which Said That Civilian Deaths From Terrorism Were Down Something Like 80 Percent Or 90 Percent From Their Peak Of Two Or Three Years Ago.

I Was 30 When 9/11 Happened And I Had Lived Exactly 15 Years Of Life In America, So I Was Half American. I Was A Full-fledged New Yorker.

It Seems An Obvious Thing To Say, But You Should Not Imagine That We Pakistanis Are All Potential Terrorists, Just As We Should Not Imagine That You Americans Are All Undercover Assassins.