What a nice day! I had three emails in response to my Dallas Morning News column on Robert E. Howard (prolific pulp writer of fantasy, horror, westerns, and creator of Conan the Barbarian among others) that ran this morning, plus one comment on my blog. I felt like I was really talking to people. And it was a lovely day besides--I spent the morning getting ready for dinner guests--making a pot of chicken/vegetable soup, setting the table, etc. I lingered over the morning paper and then over watering the houseplants and trimming away the overgrown and dead parts. Tonight two good friends came for dinner--they were on their way home from Market in Dallas. We had a lovely visit, talk ranging from the old house they just bought to politics. The soup was okay, the salad really good, and the company excellent. The wine was so-so--they brought a cabernet called Wrangler. Since neither Linda nor I drink red, Rodger got to taste it and declared it tasted like wrangler wine--though eventually he said it improved after it had been open a while (he did admit that might be due to his having had a glass already). Linda and I drank a chardonnay called Cupcakes--she admitted she buys wine by the label, but it was perfectly fine I thought.
Today I also finished reading Sara Paretsky's Writing in an Age of Silence. It resonated with me for several reasons--she writes abut her heroine V.I. Warshawki's adventures in far South Chicago--not my part of South Chicago but still the same general territory. And she writes about commercial publishing--there used to be more than forty publishing houses in New York but today there are essentially seven publishers, and they are all big corporations with many businesses. Books, she points out, have become products, just like Pampers. (In fact, one corporate conglomeration brought in the head of their Pampers division to manage Simon & Schuster). Publishing today is strictly a bottom-line business and Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, and a lot of other great American authors would never see print today. The days of Maxwell Perkins, the editor who published Wolfe and others because he loved books and good writing, are gone. Today's editors spend more time with spread sheets than manuscripts, according to Paretsky. It makes a great argument for university presses--but I, a frustrated mystery writer, find that cold comfort. On the other hand, as the director of a small academic press, I plan to use her comments with my administration.
Paretsky is even more powerful writing about the Patriot Act and its effect on freedom in the United States. She cites a horrifying list of individual cases--people being arrested and held for days without being able to tell their family where they are--all on the most flimsy charges. I closed the book with a profound sense of sadness for our country but a determination to do more to speak out--maybe this blog is my first step in that direction.
Another step--I sent a check, albeit small, to Hillary Clinton's campaign today. For me, it was a significant step. As an on-the-record liberal, I am beseiged with phone and email solicitations from the Democratic candidates, from Move-On, People for the American Way, and the national, state, and local Democratic parties, but I have held them all off, saying I would contribute when I made up my mind. And I think it was less Sara Paretsky than Meet the Press, George Stephanopoulos, and the MacNeill hour that made me decide today that the time has come to support Hillary. I think she has the courage, knowledge, and capability to begin to heal the economy, do something about health care, and, most important to me, end the war-with-no-end in Iraq. Whoever moves into the White House next year has an enormous task to fix the mess we're in, but I think she's the best choice.
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