Literary Survivor
Apr. 7th, 2003 05:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yendiJeanette Winterson, always worth reading, lashes into the Best-Loved Book thing the Beeb is doing.
Reading is an act of free will, not mass market entertainment. It is a private dialogue that cannot be monitored or controlled by the State or the media. One of the reasons why tyrants hate books is not so much for what they contain as what they symbolise. The privacy of reading protects it from the necessary control of the dictator. Democracy is our new dictator. Does everything we do have to be on television? Do we have to do it collectively? Do we have to vote on it? How about giving culture and the arts a real place on mainstream television? There is no need for this game show mentality.
Needless to say, she is not amused.
Reading is an act of free will, not mass market entertainment. It is a private dialogue that cannot be monitored or controlled by the State or the media. One of the reasons why tyrants hate books is not so much for what they contain as what they symbolise. The privacy of reading protects it from the necessary control of the dictator. Democracy is our new dictator. Does everything we do have to be on television? Do we have to do it collectively? Do we have to vote on it? How about giving culture and the arts a real place on mainstream television? There is no need for this game show mentality.
Needless to say, she is not amused.
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-04-07 10:40 pm (UTC)May your day be beautiful and the coming year be full of dreams fulfilled.
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Date: 2003-04-09 06:34 am (UTC)