In defense of old, dead, white male writers
“Throw the book at me, I'm defending the old, dead, white male writers I love ...
“Yes, so much literature from the past is uncomfortable to read, and it may be offensive, but we need to accept that for what it is, realise it just doesn’t conform to our own sensibilities, and use that literature for what it can provide us with today: rollicking entertainment and an understanding that our ancestors were very flawed, but we’re also very flawed, and the people of the future will be flawed too; however, by learning from the mistakes of the past perhaps we can help make tomorrow a little bit better than today.”
Read more of the “defense” via this link.
Personal Postscript — Well, here is a closely related matter: The late literary critic Harold Bloom warned us that the western canon was under siege by cultural revisionists, and those activists continue to indict and banish many old, dead, white male writers. Like Bloom, friends, I am an unrepentant conservative defender of the western canon, and my passionate defense also extends often to offensive, flawed authors outside the canon. Arthur Conan Doyle is just one example. And so it goes.
Saturday’s good reading and listening for the weekend
What people in other forums are saying about public policy Continue reading
Women Directors Made Almost Half The Films At This Year’s Venice Festival
“This is an unprecedented percentile which we hope augurs well for a future cinema that is free of any sort of prejudice and discrimination.” – Toronto Star
ANOTHER NOW: My political science fiction novel depicting a fully-fledged socialism we could have had Yanis Varoufakis
Working From Home: The New ‘industrial’ Revolution Forbes
Mutant Algorithms Are Coming for Your Education Bloomberg (David L)
Central bankers need to overhaul outdated thinking on labor markets Nikkei Asian Review. Resilc: “By the rich/for the rich/eat the rich.”
America still needs unions in this digital gilded age Seattle Times (resilc)
The American Dream Should Not Depend on Chinese Labor American Conservative
A robot wrote this entire article. Does that scare you, human? Guardian (resilc)
