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An unfettered vision of the world

Salman Rushdie writes in the Guardian:
The old idea of the intellectual as the one who speaks truth to power is still an idea worth holding on to. Tyrants fear the truth of books because it's a truth that's in hock to nobody, it's a single artist's unfettered vision of the world. They fear it even more because it's incomplete, because the act of reading completes it, so that the book's truth is slightly different in each reader's different inner world, and these are the true revolutions of literature, these invisible, intimate communions of strangers, these tiny revolutions inside each reader's imagination, and the enemies of the imagination, politburos, ayatollahs, all the different goon squads of gods and power, want to shut these revolutions down, and can't. Not even the author of a book can know exactly what effect his book will have, but good books do have effects, and some of these effects are powerful, and all of them, thank goodness, are impossible to predict in advance.

Literature is a loose cannon. This is a very good thing.

Replace "books" and "literature" in the above excerpt with "blogs" and "blogging" and tell me: does it not hold true?
Comments:
Hi Amit
This looks like a nice new blog to go with your many other blogs.
 
i refuse! *LOL*

but amit, seriously, just like media are extensions of man, blogs are an extension of literature.

NO? *commits suicide*
 
er...in other words, we stand on the shoulders of giants.
 
Fadereu

Blogs can be an extension of any form of writing -- literature or journalism or confessional pap. There's very little literature in most blogs, actually. And a non-literary journalistic blog could possess some of the qualities Rushdie describes, which was the point of the post.

Standing on the shoulders of giants is all well and good, but just don't kick the guy, ok?
 
I don't like to use the word "extension"
Blog IS a form of journalism AND literature. As the technology develops the forms of journalism also change and take new paths. It is kind of similar to the changes that occured in the past. In 1452, Gutenberg came with "printing". Now we have online journalism+blogs etc. I totally agree with you
 
Standing on the shoulders of giants is all well and good, but just don't kick the guy, ok?

Can't kick a giant and get away with it. Standing on his shoulder, the best I can do is pee in his ear.

ROTFL.
 
Rohit, my friend, are you sure that's all you do? These days the TOI is so full of ...
 
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