Pan Redux / Politically Incorrect Correctness? / Poems by Cohen / Hornby Talks As Does Amis and Rushdie

Pan Redux?
What gave Geraldine McCaughrean the nerve to write a sequel to Peter Pan? asks the Guardian.

The Politically Correct Becomes Incorrect?
Lionel Shrivere argues in The Australian that “fiction may be the last refuge of the outrageous, the last redoubt of Orwell’s thought crime. Moreover, even the freedom to be outrageous in fiction is under threat.” Her essay provokes thinking. In the West, we readily condemned nation’s for trying authors for violating “Turkishness.” She wonders if the attempt to embrace all people into a culture is not leading to a similar crime against the state of inclusion.

Two Poems by Cohen
The Guardian has published “The Cigarette Issue” and “Seisen is Dancing” by Leonard Cohen.

Hornby Tells ‘All’
In an essay entitled “The Complete Polysyllabic Spree,” Erica Wagener interviews Nick Hornby. He says: “When I started being review, I thought, ‘Oh god, I really want to know if my book’s any good or not.’ I don’t read any of them any more, but when you read two people side-by-side and one of them is saying you’re a moron and the other is saying you’re a genius, you think: Okay, so now I’m being asked to choose whcih of tehse people is the cleverer. Because I’d kind of like to know the right answer. And then after a while you just give up.”

Amis Lets It Rip–Yet Again
In the last month, Martin Amis released two works about radical Islam. Guardian writer Rachel Cooke flies from London to the Hamptons on Long Island to interview the author. He, like Hornby, stopped reading reviews: “You’re minding your own business. Then you see the strap-line on the [Lodon] Times: ‘Martin Amis is Shit.’ So it’s a drive-by shooting.”

Rushdie Interviewed
James Campbell of the Guardian interviews Salman Rushdie.