Samar’s Reviews > Joseph Anton: A Memoir > Status Update
Samar
is on page 53 of 636
instead. He was already beginning to understand that what was wrong with his writing was that there was something wrong, something misconceived, about him. If he hadn’t become the writer he thought he had it in him to be, it was because he didn’t know who he was. And slowly, from his ignominious place at the bottom of the literary barrel, he began to understand who that person might be.
— Mar 02, 2013 12:35PM
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Samar’s Previous Updates
Samar
is on page 345 of 636
Strong ideas welcomed dissent. ‘He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill,’ wrote Edmund Burke. ‘Our antagonist is our helper.’ Only the weak and the authoritarian turned away from their opponents and called them names and sometimes wished to do them harm.
— Mar 12, 2013 11:18AM
Samar
is on page 210 of 636
Liberty lay in the argument itself, not the resolution of that argument, in the ability to quarrel, even with the most cherished beliefs of others; a free society was not placid but turbulent. The bazaar of conflicting views was the place where freedom rang.
— Mar 10, 2013 08:29AM
Samar
is on page 208 of 636
Security was the art of making nothing happen. The experienced security officer acceptedboredom as a part of the job. Boredom was good. You didn’t want things to get interesting. Interesting was dangerous. The whole point was to keep everything dull.
— Mar 10, 2013 08:24AM
Samar
is on page 187 of 636
Cultural relativism is the death of ethical thought, supporting the right of tyrannical priests to tyrannise, of despotic parents to mutilate their daughters, because it is a part of their ‘culture’ to do so. Bigotry, prejudice and violence or the threat of violence are not human ‘values’. They are proof of the absence of such values.
— Mar 10, 2013 06:52AM
Samar
is on page 178 of 636
The former pop singer Cat Stevens, recently reincarnated as the born-again Muslim ‘leader’ Yusuf Islam, was on TV, too, hoping for his death and stating that he would be prepared to call in the hit squads if he learned the blasphemer’s whereabouts.
— Mar 10, 2013 06:33AM
Samar
is on page 168 of 636
Now he realised that this little tale about a war between language and silence could be given a meaning that was not only linguistic; that hidden inside it was a parable about freedom and tyranny whose potential he finally understood. The story had been ahead of him, so to speak, and now his life had caught up with it.
— Mar 10, 2013 06:04AM
Samar
is on page 72 of 636
‘The act of migration,’ he wrote, ‘puts into crisis everything about the migrating individual or group, everything about identity and selfhood and culture and belief. So if this is a novel about migration it must be that act of putting in question.
— Mar 03, 2013 12:13AM
