ABSTRACT
There is still a dogged belief (perhaps hope) that somehow literature has nothing to do with politics, that serious reading and writing are a retreat from the world. Indeed, the free-wheeling personal self-expression of the 1960s created the expectation for many writers and readers that writing would be no more than a spinning out of what was inside them, rather than the writer’s response to what was outside, in the world. Indeed, the professions of writer and politician are similar: both trade in visions of the future, ideologies, in influencing people; both are concerned with transmitting ideas in words. Both can sell to the public only what the public wants to buy, and both can lead the public by the nose only in the direction the public wants to go.
