Good day today.
Just did forty minutes talking with Hugh Hewitt on his national radio show, and got probably my favorite review ever of SINS today, by Dave Forsmark at FrontPageMagazine.com.
Hugh is a fine interviewer, always makes me think, and it's live radio so I have to repress the urge to say --- let me ponder that for five minutes and I'll get back to you with something clever.
Strange thing happened when I was reading Forsmark's review. He quotes from the book about the way the Old One had cracked the former U.S.A.
"It had been his money, filtered through numerous fronts, that had financed the think tanks and jihadi legal defense teams … all the useful idiots. It had been his money that had funded politicians and religious figures, compliant judges and radical journalists, billions of dollars in honoraria, with presidential libraries and foundations in particular targeted. That was the carrot. … There was also the stick. Hard-line military leaders discredited. Evangelicals mocked. Curious investigators framed or fired. Or worse."
But domestic spiritual decline was only half the cause. America also was weakened by those who held the idea of projecting power to protect liberty in contempt. In Ferrigno's future, the mainstream media's undermining of the Iraq War was a key turning point:
"The U.S. Military won every battle, but they had no voice, no message that could be heard. The Old One's servants monitored every TV station and never saw a hero, only the dead. A war without heroes, without victories. Only petty atrocities inflated for all the world to see, clucked over by millionaire news anchors and fatuous movie stars. Their president himself apologized. We must show that we are more humane than the terrorists, he said. As though the wolf should apologize for having sharper teeth than the rabbit. Good fortune beyond the Old One's wildest dreams, an enemy who wanted to be loved. Be ashamed of the war and soon you will be ashamed of the warriors — the warriors got that message soon enough."
I really like these two blocks of quotes. Really like them. It's just that Ihave no memory of writing them. This happens often when I read reviews of my books. No, I'm no plagarist, it's just that my best writing isn't formulated or constructed or measured out. I hear about pathetic MFA lit dweebs talking about their suffering over every sentence, polishing every word and I want to punch them out. The best writing emerges from a deeper and more profoundly true place than the intellect. Most of the time I don't feel like the writer of my books, I feel like the first reader. Which is great. Because I like reading a good book.
