I'm After A Snake And Please God

One Of My Favourite Contemporary Fiction Writers Is A Texan, Ben Fountain. His Extraordinary Novel, Billy Lynn's Long Half-time Walk, All Takes Place Within The Half-time Show At A Dallas Cowboys Football Game. No One Has Better Summed Up The American Appetite For Spectacle, The Link Between Sports And Politics, And The Absolute Madness Of George W. Bush's Iraq War.

I Think One Thing Writers Can Do Is Point Out That You Don't Have To Say Openly Racist Things, Like [donald] Trump, To Be A Racist Or A Xenophobe.

And Yet The World We Live In-its Divisions And Conflicts, Its Widening Gap Between Rich And Poor, Its Seemingly Inexplicable Outbursts Of Violence-is Shaped Far Less By What We Celebrate And Mythologize Than By The Painful Events We Try To Forget. Leopold's Congo Is But One Of Those Silences Of History.

All Of Us Living In Today's World Are Facing An Enormous Crisis - Arguably The Greatest That Humanity Has Ever Faced - In The Form Of Man-made Global Warming; One Can't Be Neutral At Such A Moment. It's Like Claiming To Be Neutral If You're Living In Germany In 1933.

Growing Inequality Is A Huge Problem, And Of Course Is Intimately Connected To Xenophobia And Racism.