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People want to feel that their presidents know what they're doing, that our artists are capable of masterpieces, that our weapons are invincible. That we're No. 1 in everything...
Dissent Wanted

Literature & Art Across Frontiers: Author! Author! This Is Your Den
The authors of the past, as distinct from the run-of-the-press journalists who often write about them, have tended to be remote figures who would rather hide under a rock, typing, than stand on top of it, speaking.
Book Dens, Towns, have bookshops aplenty and second-hand bookshops in profusion. But it is more than these. It is also representative of the reading culture that encourages these places to begin, develop and thrive. Any bookshop worth its paper knows how to satisfy the fundamental requirements of its readers. For example, knowing when to help or to leave one to browse in peace; or not using store demonstrators; not putting handwritten or typewritten "staff pick" notes under books, but letting us decide for ourselves what is worth reading; and certainly not playing radios or music of any description. The other day, in a formerly favourite secondhand bookshop, we asked for the radio to be turned down. "This is the first time in eight years that anyone has complained," said the man at the counter. Would they do the same in a library?
• Australian writers lack balls! [Of Critics And Political Opinions ; Ach Can You Teach Pleasure In Books? ]
• · lot of it comes from book-jacket blurbs, which produce a repertoire of sentences that publishers would like to see in book reviews The book world has a language all of its own [Amazon DigitalRiver Reviews Drowning not Waving: James Marcus's Book Boom And Bust]
• · · Judge: Booker Sludge Tibor Fischer slogs his way through 126 novels
• · · · Like immigrants of earlier generations - the Italian stonecutter tuning his radio to opera, the Irish stevedore reciting Yeats in a tavern, the Jewish tailor viewing a Yiddish production of King Lear The Classics Will Set You Free? The agents of our true liberation
• · · · · Cold Beer Anyone? Real River, Real Ale, Real Books, Real Men? Manly Men's Reading Club Wins Reading Prize
• · · · · · See Also We're living in a global village now and there's no "there" anymore