Saturday, November 06, 2004
My Pet Goat (and other stories)
Amid all the press comment on that election, here's the first original insight I've come across all week.
Children's author Philip Pullman has written an excellent piece about the value of reading, (edited version here in today's Guardian; originally published in Index on Censorship).
Pullman argues that reading is a democratic activity, which is why theocracies (whether of the religious or Marxist variety) suppress it. Pullman points to "the difference between democratic reading and totalitarian reading, between reading that nourishes the heart and the imagination and reading that starves them."
Given this choice, in which direction do President Bush's instincts take him?
# posted by Simon Titley @ 11:56 pm 
