help salman rushdie!

Just came upon this while looking for stuff on Coetzee:

A petition, dated 12 April 1990, signed by an entire delegation of internationally renowned writers, asking for governmental aid for Salman Rushdie, who had, a year ago in 1989, been the subject of death-threats after the publication of his novel, The Satanic Verses. The names include Margaret Atwood, Derek Walcott, Umberto Eco, Hanif Kureishi, Arthur Miller, Toni Morrison, Michael Ondaatje, Harold Pinter, Susan Sontag, Kurt Vonnegut, David Lodge, Andrei Voznesensky, and JM Coetzee of course... The list goes on - some familiar names, some completely unknown to me. Some of them dead by now. An international coalition (there's no other word for it) of people whose lifework it is (was) to shape thought, to extend the frontiers of our collective ideas of who we are and what it means to be human. I like the sense of camaraderie this evokes - the sense of some larger solidarity of purpose that unites all these disparate people from all over the world. And of that ultimate destiny that we all share.

It reminds me of this, from John Donne:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

How old was I when this happened? It's been 18 years. And now, look how all this is being memorialised on the internet, and me adding to it in this absolutely insignificant way.

More than two weeks spent mostly in silence and recovering from a bad flu that won't go away, is not good for the mental health. Thank goodness for the internet - it's been my main link to the rest of the world during this time. But virtuality can only take one so far. I think I need to embark on another round of excessive socialising again, soon.
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clarity

from Coetzee, J.M. Disgrace.

....."... She says I am not a good guide."
....."But you were a teacher."
....."Of the most incidental kind. Teaching was never a vocation for me. Certainly I never aspired to teach people how to live. I was what used to be called a scholar. I wrote books about dead people. That was where my heart was. I taught only to make a living."
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musing

Over at PFFA, there's a bunch of crazy people currently engaged in a read-a-poet project: the idea is that we read the work of just one contemporary poet over the entire month of June, and write daily commentaries on what we're reading. It's a fascinating exercise - not so much because of what one can learn about the poets from other people's commentaries, but because of the way individual commentators develop their relationships with their poets over time.

Criticism is a frighteningly revealing activity. You feel so exposed, because you can't help but reveal your prejudices, your values, in the act of writing about someone else's work. And then there is the fear of being found out, of having your own inadequacies laid bare to someone else's critical eye.

And then of course there is always the sneaking suspicion that the poet you're writing about is lurking around the forum, reading what you're saying, and thinking, What an idiot.

Two more weeks of this. I wonder where we all will be at the end of this.
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