Isn't the incitement to action the emotional response they've prodded you for though?

I always think that, and my teachers always sort of argued with me. Although I am not so sure how much action I could take as a blubbering mess!

My thing with Brecht (and I think I may have spoken about it here before which would be embarrassing: "Hey, do you wanna hear my one deep thought again?") is that he was a better artist than polemicist or theorist. He himself was unable to write plays that met his own criteria for what a play should be; he tried to create a slew of characters that were rigged for an audience's disdain and still, people liked them. So, he goes and rewrites the material to make the characters less complex. I mean, when you're chopping lumps of the more sophisticated storytelling from your work, it's time to devote yourself full-time to pamphlets.

Everyone should embrace the colophon.

I think I have found my new tag.

Aimee, don't let them scare you off Watership Down; it's a marvelous exciting, creative, and moving story. There are melancholy parts, but nothing that should break you. I enjoyed it immensely and reread it regularly.

Spoilers for the next HP book.

How spoil-y?? Like on a scale from "Hermione shags Ron" to "Neville gets killed"?

They are middling spoilers (so-and-so will have an important role in the book 7) except the one about Snape where she answered the question about whether he was on the side of the good or evil.

t wavers wavers wavers

I LOVE that the biggy came as a result of Salman Rushdie asking a question.

Ok, I can deal with those.

More detailed report of the Q & A session: [link]