On August 4, 2004, 15 literary luminaries gathered before a full house at New
York City's Cooper Union to present a series of readings on the topics of free
speech and democracy, in concert with the PEN Campaign for Core Freedoms. In
addition to a crowd that stood for hours in a line that circled Cooper Union
several times, the event reached a coast-to-coast audience through a simultaneous
radio broadcast on Pacifica Radio's WBAI and a subsequent broadcast on C-SPAN's
BookTV. |
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In front of a packed house, writers Laurie Anderson, Ariel Dorfman,
Monique Truong, Jonathan Safran Foer (right), Eve Ensler, and many others, read
from texts they had chosen around the theme "State of Emergency":
"There has rarely been a moment when public discourse and truth were so
far apart," commented Ariel Dorfman before his reading from Don
Quixote. Hundreds of members of the audience signed their names to
PEN's Core Freedoms statement and offered their support to the Campaign. |
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The Village Voice
called the evening the "literary event of the summer," and numerous
articles about the readings were printed in newspapers worldwide
following the event. Among the many presentations were Paul Auster's
(left) reading from Thoreau's 1854 retort to the Fugitive Slave Act, A.
M. Homes' reading from Lawrence Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the
Mind, Don DeLillo's and Francine Prose's readings of Zbiegnew Herbert's
poetry, and Russell Banks' reading from Mark Twain. |
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PRESS COVERAGE
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Celine Curiol in Liberation: August 9, 2004
For fifteen years, Salman Rushdie had to hide for having written what
some refused to read. These days, he wishes to denounce another form of
censorship in his adopted country, the United States.
Corine Lesnes in Le Monde: August 10, 2004
One can't say they are the first, but, with less than three months
before the Presidential election, a number of artists and intellectuals
are taking a stand against George Bush and the war in Iraq.
Salman Rushdie on Democracy NOW!: August 10, 2004
Will we become our enemy or not? Will we become repressive as our enemy
is repressive? Will we become intolerant as our enemy is intolerant? Or
will we not?
Ariel Dorfman in the Los Angeles Times: August 29, 2004
As the ultimate guardians of language and its complexity, writers have
always felt the need to deal with the great crises of their time.
Edward Hirsch in the Washington Post: September 19, 2004
A radically understated style stood as a special corollary to the quest
for things-in-themselves. Herbert sought a cleansed language of what he
called "semantic transparency," the pristine word that holds against
modern debasements of language.
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AUDIO ARCHIVE
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