On Reading
I hate to keep writing on this theme, but...
I remember, as a young man, hearing stories about writers in the Soviet Union being sent to the gulags because of the things they had written.
Writers of great courage who knew that the words they put to paper would be considered incendiary, and would likely result in horrific abuse, but who did it anyway, because it was important.
I remember very well Salman Rushdie who wrote a novel and received in turn, calls for his murder, from a government.
He didn’t pull his novel from the market.
He stood up for himself, and his writing, in a tremendous act of courage.
I remember two newspaper reporters in Washington DC who pursued a story about wrongdoing by a then very popular President.
Two reporters of great courage who eventually pulled that President from the highest office in the land.
Quite recently I remember the new Queen Consort of England giving a speech in which she called for writers to have courage.
These people, writers of courage, are real writers. Those writers with courage are the writers who have changed the world, and will continue to change the world.
But, alas, there are also those who claim to be writers, but who are not. They may put words on paper, but they are not people who will ever have a positive impact on our world, not even among those closest to them. Because they lack courage. They seek to be protected by government and big technology companies. Protected from the ideas of others.
We have a choice of whom we read. Will we read writers of courage, or will we read those who are so insecure that they beg for someone, anyone, to silence and censor the voices they disagree with?
As for me, I want to read writers with courage.
Powerful and pithy post! It is wonderful to see so many people of various backgrounds and beliefs here on Substack speaking up in their own unique ways to defend free speech and artistic integrity.
Unfortunately, the situation was similar in Hungary in the past. Those writers, poets, film directors, actors, entertainers, athletes who dared to criticize the system at that time, the unspoken problems that the system wanted to hide, were processed in some work, persecuted and made impossible. Their works were banned, they were tried to make them the victims of some conceptual lawsuit. They were second class citizens in their own country.
Completely agreeing with the last sentence of your article, however, I would like to add a little to it. But only with the fact that I want to read and hear about such brave people, and I want to read/see/hear the works and actions and examples of such brave people.