Not right, not ethical, not real.

For those who have the time to read, here's a short best-of-the-year list http://thephoenix.com/Boston/Arts/74084-Year-in-Books-Word-plays/
At least we can note some of the best that we're not reading.

Imagine writing a review of one of these; first you'd have to read it. You have that to look forward to. Who would your audience be? Now imagine writing a review of a non-existent book.
Rather like Whitman publishing his review of Leaves of Grass. Not right, not ethical, not real.

I've been reading Harold Pinter obituaries. I don't know his work well. I am reminded of the word trenchant. In his work, in any good work, comes this vision of how things are, behind the words and silences. Nothing new there, I suppose, but here's the rub. That trenchant feeling of cutting through the words and silences works elsewhere, specifically in the world of politics. And so in regard to the torture of Iraqi prisoners, we imagine how it was, not to be tortured(that's a different realm), but how it came about. Imagine a War Crimes trial, a few years from now, President Bush on the stand:

"No. No, I never gave any orders about torture. That was all Cheney. Cheney said he'd, you know, handle it, and I didn't have to worry about it. That was all Cheney."

Pinter considered his country, England, embodied by Tony Blair, as sort of America's bitch. I consider President Bush more as a good looking, though unruly, adolescent and, as such, a victim of child abuse.

Can you remember your mother saying, "Now get dressed. We're going to your Aunt Louise's birthday party." You got dressed. You rode with the family. But you weren't really there for Louise. Where was your sense of autonomy? Now the acid test: imagine Bush's autonomy.
I can't.