Anna
It is we who are responsible for Putin’s policies, we first and foremost, not Putin. The fact that our reactions to him and his cynical manipulation of Russia have been confined to gossiping in the…
Category: Journalists
Writing for the Future
In winter-spring of 2015 I read every book I could find in English translation of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. She’s another writer who would be at home in the world of Kafka’s Axe (“But we…
“I Denounce the US Government’s Threats of War against North Korea” by Andrew Wimmer
Andrew shared this early this morning, and I want to share it with others… Dear Friends, Our first obligation in the face of US war threats is to speak a word of truth, wherever we…
Authors for Reading Alongside Svetlana Alexievich’s Secondhand Time
I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading…
American Ingenuity
[Daisy Cutters were] so named because they were designed to explode just above the ground so the main force of the explosion was horizontal in order to cause the maximum destruction at ground level. The…
Dear Randa
6 September 2009 Dear Randa, Given how busy you must be, I can’t imagine that you would have brought along with you Robert Fisk’s The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East. I…
Svetlana Alexievich: Fascinated by People
Svetlana Alexievich won the Nobel Prize for Literature last year. Her oral history, Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, appeared this spring in the US. Translated by Bela Shayevich, the book is a compelling…
Dear Isabel (Letter/11)
Wednesday 1 July 2015 Dear Isabel End of page 12 and all of page 13 You WERE paralyzed with fear. Fear comes and goes. You can write anything you want. You can go outside the…
Dear Isabel (Letter/10)
The End of June 2015 Page 12, paragraph 1 Can you tell me the names of journalists you respect whose work you could also accurately describe as “Self-serving, theatrical, and soothing”? The part of you…
Dear Isabel (Letter/9)
Monday 29 June 2015 Dear Isabel Glad you had friends visiting over the weekend and that you now have a little more space for your daily practices and chill time/spaces. Page 11, paragraph 1 Don…