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Highlights This Month

Bad Government and Silly Literature ~ Carol Bly

"If an American were to turn out a novel or story in which men and women characters consorted together without mention of physical desire, we would wonder in reviews and at lunch why the author suppressed sexuality. Yet hundreds of novels and stories offer us American characters who live out their lives without any political and ethical anxiety. We ought to be calling it suppression, because we are as much political and moral creatures as we are sexual creatures."—from "Bad Government and Silly Literature" -- Milkweed

In Bad Government and Silly Literature (1986), Bly gave full rein to her genius as a pamphleteer, excoriating writers and readers of American fiction who, she argued, had lost their ethical awareness: "Our cadre of serious writers ... have emotions as citizens of the second cruelest government of our decade," but seldom "bring ethics-consciousness into our stories." -- Michael True, author of People Power

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Henry Payne

Growth and Inequality: Understanding Recent Trends and Political Choices

Growth by itself is not enough. Seen from a moral standpoint, we must assess how growth, globally and within most countries, affects the economic position of the poor.

Thomas Pogge, Dissent Magazine

In current debates about the world economy, “growth is good” often appears as a truism. Growth leads to wealth, it is said, and greater wealth is surely desirable, especially for the poorer developing countries. Closer inspection, however, leads to a far more nuanced assessment.

Legend has it that there was a time when economists celebrated economic growth, regardless of its distribution. Such economists would have judged alternative economic practices and policies exclusively by their relative impact on the inflation-adjusted (per capita) social product. I am not sure such economists were ever dominant. Economists have long seen the point of income and wealth in the satisfaction of human preferences and understood that, insofar as such satisfaction increases with rising income or wealth, it does so at a declining rate. At any rate, the legend of the growth-only economists is useful because it allows real economists to stress that they are different, that they favor pro-poor growth, growth-with-equity, or some such thing. This is crucial to their theological role of appeasing the conscience of their wealthy constituents and of reconciling rich and poor alike to the great globalization push of the last twenty-five years. If economic experts committed to equity and eradication of poverty celebrate this push and the growth it produces, how can we withhold our approval?

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What We Miss if We Pass on Poetry?

Hint: Not Poems

Literary News, Utne Reader

Mary Oliver is slight, silver-haired, and sweet-mother-of-mercy, as wily as the day is long. She’s superbly sharp and has impeccable timing, a bemused smile often nipping at the corners of her mouth. So as I sat, rapt, this past Sunday (April 6) at the State Theatre, listening to the Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet read, I couldn’t help but wonder: Why wasn’t there a line around the block? Why don’t more people get fired up about poetry?                                          

Don’t get me wrong: A robust, enthusiastic crowd turned out for the event, which kicked off the Literary Legends Series, a joint venture of the Hennepin Theatre Trust and the Loft, Minneapolis’ literary center extraordinare. In box-office terms, I’ve no doubt it was a success. But Oliver’s reading was so damn good—so powerful, so lively, so entertaining and uplifting—that I yearned to fill a coliseum with people at her attention.

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Charles Schulz: Peanuts

‘Counterknowledge’: when fiction masquerades as fact

From 9/11 to homeopathy, ‘counterknowledge’ thrives thanks to a mad mixture of postmodern political correctness and capitalist greed.

Damian Thompson, Spiked

For anyone who still believes in the methodology of the Enlightenment, sitting around the table at a twenty-first century dinner party can be intellectual torture.

Your fellow guests tuck hungrily into a menu of conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, junk history and (above all) quack medicine. Yet they will also have the nerve to insist that they reject the ‘medieval superstition’ of religion.

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David Horsey

Interview with Kurt Vonnegut

David Brancaccio, NOW, PBS

NOW's David Brancaccio interviews literary icon Kurt Vonnegut about his life and the current state of American democracy. With his classic wit, the legendary author of Cats Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five comments on how American democracy works and delivers some choice words for our parties, our system, and our president. Vonnegut's latest book, a collection of nonfiction entitled A Man Without a Country, is a bestseller.

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Read an excerpt from A Man Without a Country

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