JONATHAN YARDLEY

Even a government as ostensibly open and committed to freedom of speech as our own — are [censors] more likely to operate in their own interests than in their citizens’. In the age of cyberspace, that is a scary prospect.

Reading it now for the seventh or eighth time, I am more convinced than ever not merely that The Great Gatsby is Fitzgerald’s masterwork but that it is the American masterwork, the finest work of fiction by any of this country’s writers.

State intervention in the literary realm went far beyond the blue-penciling of texts. It extended to the shaping of literature itself as a force at work throughout the social order. If states wielded such power in the age of print, what will restrain them from abusing it in the age of the Internet?

You don't have to be Dave Halberstam to see that the American role in both conflicts [the Iraq war and the Vietnam conflict] is characterized by arrogance, ignorance and self-delusion at the highest levels of government.

Amis is a force unto himself There is, quite simply, no one else like him.

One of my pet theories is that readers have built-in BS detectors that enable them to recognize insincerity in writers. David [Halberstam] was sincerity to the core. He believed in what he wrote, and that conviction conveyed itself to readers.

In Washington, and wherever two or more politicians may gather, he who does not get caught has ‘character’ and he who gets caught has none..

David Halberstam often wrote about the powerful, but his real sympathies lay with ordinary people. He was very uncomfortable with bigfoot Washington journalism - he thought it was lazy and self-serving.

David [Halberstam] kept on doing what he did because he loved it. One of the obituaries I read quoted him as saying that he did journalism for the same reason the great Julius Irving did basketball: He loved doing it even when he was having a bad day.

In Washington, and wherever two or more politicians may gather, he who does not get caught has ‘character’ and he who gets caught has none..

State intervention in the literary realm went far beyond the blue-penciling of texts. It extended to the shaping of literature itself as a force at work throughout the social order. If states wielded such power in the age of print, what will restrain them from abusing it in the age of the Internet?

Even a government as ostensibly open and committed to freedom of speech as our own — are [censors] more likely to operate in their own interests than in their citizens’. In the age of cyberspace, that is a scary prospect.

You don't have to be Dave Halberstam to see that the American role in both conflicts [the Iraq war and the Vietnam conflict] is characterized by arrogance, ignorance and self-delusion at the highest levels of government.

Reading it now for the seventh or eighth time, I am more convinced than ever not merely that The Great Gatsby is Fitzgerald’s masterwork but that it is the American masterwork, the finest work of fiction by any of this country’s writers.

One of my pet theories is that readers have built-in BS detectors that enable them to recognize insincerity in writers. David [Halberstam] was sincerity to the core. He believed in what he wrote, and that conviction conveyed itself to readers.

David Halberstam often wrote about the powerful, but his real sympathies lay with ordinary people. He was very uncomfortable with bigfoot Washington journalism - he thought it was lazy and self-serving.

Amis is a force unto himself There is, quite simply, no one else like him.

David [Halberstam] kept on doing what he did because he loved it. One of the obituaries I read quoted him as saying that he did journalism for the same reason the great Julius Irving did basketball: He loved doing it even when he was having a bad day.