(December) Indie Newsletter
The BGR's 411 on the indie literary arts...for the month of...whatever
I’m thinking that it’s not so important that I have a newsletter for a particular month, but that I have the newsletter. Right? Anyway, I’m saying that because this doesn’t really feel like a “December” newsletter; I didn’t have one for November, and I’m currently waxing philosophical.
What would a book about your life be called? (well, other than a biography)
Mine? One More Adventure
I came across a Guardian article in November and I thought about it a lot; nothing in particular; the article just crossed my mind several times: it was about the then 75-year-old writer Salman Rushie being stabbed multiple times in Aug 2022 —losing vision in one eye—moments before giving a lecture, and over 30 years after a fatwa ordering his execution for his novel The Satanic Verses was declared.1
Then I came across another Guardian article. It’s called “‘The good guys don’t always win’: Salman Rushdie on peace, Barbie and what freedom cost him”, and I thought that was pretty interesting. Because ‘bad guys always win’ in what context? Who’s a ‘good’ guy? And, I’m thinking, bad guys always win…in their own reality of badness. If enough people share in a “bad” reality, it certainly becomes ubiquitous, but ubiquity doesn’t equal victory; it just means that badness is widespread.