Comments on The Role of the 21st Century

Yawn.

Get out there and find some more weed on the street.

What poetry festival?

It was morning.

Salman Rushdie woke up.

He wrote a letter.

In the letter, he wrote "fuck."

Salman Rushdie felt "fucked."

He thought, "I am fucked."

Salman Rushdie went to the bathroom.

He put his finger on his anus.

The anus said "fuck you."

Salman Rushdie bent over.

He looked at his anus.

"What the fuck?" he said.

The anus looked ashamed.

I am so compelled by your argument, especially the beautiful image of flickering nodes in a restless network. That's superb writing, and it sways me. I can't agree that the manipulation of language won't play an instrumental role in the ways we can imagine and act, all the way until eternity. At the most mundane level, writers are being asked to assemble instrumental language in the most far-reaching and penetrating of professions, such as advertising and media of all kinds. At a more profound level, it is thought, rightly or wrongly, that writers have a talent for narrative, and so this over-flooded culture's need for shaping narratives is being sourced out to writers in the most surprising of places. Matt Briggs, I believe, is helping a data storage company design internal writing practices, to better irrigate (and exploit) the intelligence and creativity of their "human resources." The writer, or what we think the writer does, is entering a golden age.