Telegraph article defends JKR

[BovaryX]

There is an article in the Telegraph which describes the fanatical response to JKR's book and the cancel culture which enables it. A defence of artistic freedom when it is under sustained attack.

The death-wishers and cancellers can and should be ignored, but anyone interested in thinking and feeling has to show courage in the face of such narrow-minded literalism. Repressive regimes over the ages have tried to circumscribe what kind of art can be made, and in which style. The new moralism strives to similarly censor unpalatable ideas and images, on the basis that they might cause offence or harm: but life is not safe, and the imagination is filled with potentially upsetting ideas. To attack someone because they write about things you don’t like is childish: to demand an image of the world that conforms to how you would like it to be is positively demonic

www.telegraph.co.uk/books/news/disagree-jk-rowling-want-have-no-right-wish-dead-telling-stories/

Yes I think the Telegraph realise they got that review of her book VERY wrong.

who's 'they', did the Telegraph do a review without reading?

The Telegraph did an appalling review suggesting that the moral of the book was "never trust a man in a dress". This was what was picked up by Pink News and started the whole #RIP stuff.

Unimpressed by the reverse ferret, given they have yet to apologise for the lies and shitstirring which led to the countless death threats they now claim to abhor.

Nina Power, who wrote this, is very good. It's telling that it was published in the Telegraph - as a left-wing feminist, she is more used to being published in the Guardian. Such is the state of affairs that we now have to rely on the right-wing press to defend the freedom of leftish, feminist authors such as Rowling to publish without receiving death threats.

@highame

who's 'they', did the Telegraph do a review without reading?

Yup. Which started this whole mess

www.google.com/amp/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/troubled-blood-robert-galbraith-review-jk-rowling-fails-strike/amp/

Has anyone got a shade token?

Pls :)

The Telegraph doesn't do share tokens. I am not sure if I can paste the entire article, but here's the eloquent conclusion:

Under the guise of “goodness”, many of today’s activists promote the idea that we are all radically different from one another. But we are not, and fiction is precisely the place where, at a slight remove, we can see this. To feel with and for characters in plays, novels, films is to feel ourselves too: alive and in the world, with others. Rowling is a public figure and a fiction-writer: to attack her personally for telling stories, or for expressing views you do not like, is to avoid listening to what she has to say. You can easily choose not to read her work, or her public declarations, but to wish her dead demonstrates only how small and resentful your own worldview must be

I don't think the Telegraph do share tokens, but if anyone can post any more good quotes from the article I would be very grateful.

Eresh

I didn't know its review had triggered the whole book burning/burn the witch insanity. I can't seem to access the review, but the Telegraph has been shedding readers because of its dire content so it wouldn't surprise me if the reviewer was Team Woke.

Sorry Bovary, cross post with a large dog on my lap!

Ha! No problem. What kind of dog?

I don't imagine for one second that the likes of Jedward read the Telegraph

Lab/husky cross. No-one's told her she's not really lap dog material!

I don't imagine for one second that the likes of Jedward read the Telegraph

Of course they don't. I doubt they read anything at all. But this whole ridiculous business kicked off because someone on Twitter posted a link to the Telegraph article with its insinuation that the book was anti-trans, and then that lie got endlessly shared and repeated. These days death threats and jokes about book burnings happen not because of what you've said and done, but because of what someone else says you've said.

Ha heath she sounds lovely! Blimey, just had a Google about that book review and it seems like every newspaper replicated it. It is pretty unlikely any of the permanent outrage crew on Twitter frequent the Telegraph, as Redshoe suggests.

not because of what you've said and done, but because of what someone else says you've said

Yes. I can't read the original because I let my subscription lapse, but it seems like a line about what the critics of her 'trans stance' will think was the catalyst. How frickin absurd.

Here's some more:

The attacks on Rowling are alarming. Nothing she has said publicly or written in fiction has demonised trans people, yet she is repeatedly accused of having done so by people keen to make a witch out of this successful, self-made woman. More generally, the discussion around sex has been mind-bending in its wilful cruelty towards those women, in particular, who have suggested that there might be something to discuss in the moves to change the legal and metaphysical implications of words such as “woman”. Rowling is repeatedly accused of holding “hateful” views, although nothing she has said shows this, while the same people who accuse her feel free to wish her dead. We are not in the realms of literary criticism here: this is full-on scapegoating. The right of Rowling and others to imagine other worlds must be defended against calls to kill novelists and other artists. Nobody, you would hope, seriously wants the state to legislate on what can and can’t be thought and depicted, yet every day the ability to understand the world imaginatively becomes apparently weaker

It was mainly because Pink News picked it up.

Here's an archive of the Penis News article. Is the "wears women's underwear while masturbating" bit true?????

archive.vn/A7Hl4

This headline and first line in the Bookseller is giving me great pleasure this morning (rest of the article is subscription only but you get the main thrust )

www.thebookseller.com/news/rowlings-troubled-blood-sells-more-day-lethal-white-week-1219476?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium=email&utm_term=&utm_content=&utm_campaign=Morning%20Briefing%20-%20170920

[quote SunsetBeetch]Here's an archive of the Penis News article. Is the "wears women's underwear while masturbating" bit true?????

archive.vn/A7Hl4[/quote]
It makes fuck all difference anyway. Because the character is not trans, and cross dressing is a common paraphilia for serial killers.

Sorry that's a newer Penis News article, not the original.

And I'm delighted about the book sales