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Thursday 11 March 2010

Eagleton on 'the liberal literati'

I'm interested in the way a whole stratum of the liberal literati (Rushdie, to some extent Ian McEwan, A C Grayling, obviously Amis and Hitchens) - the very people you'd have expected to be guardians of the liberal flame of tolerance and understanding - have, at the very first assault, rushed into these caricatured postures driven by panic. I'm very struck by how those who are making ugly, illiberal, supremacist noises about the superiority of the west are precisely the sort of literary and liberal characters from whom you'd expect more imagination, openness and sensitivity...

Terry Eagleton interviewed in the New Statesman.

Posted by Mark Thwaite
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Serendipoetry

Appointment

He fingers the ends with the care of a vet
handling a new-fledged baby bird.
'How would you like it cut?' he asks.
'Well.' I reply. 'I have a wedding to stop.'

I know I won't go. Just impediments
are for the movies. But I let him snip
through the blade of afternoon light,
layering out the splits, the kinks, the fluff
as thoughtfully as though I had the guts
to shout your name and race you to the bus.

-- Ros Barber

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Word of the Day

meretricious

1. Appealing in a cheap or showy manner: tawdry. 2. Based on pretense or insincerity. more …

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