Our America
For the Record
- By Jim Hicks
Though we rarely think of them in this light, writers and professors of literature have training and skills with policy implications. They even, at times, feel called upon to weigh in on matters of national and international importance. In this country, however, I would be shocked if they were actually called upon, much less listened to. The one counterexample I can think of comes from abroad, and it has always appeared to me both memorable and laudable. When the Republic of Argentina formed a national commission to investigate, assemble evidence, and publish a public record after years of kidnapping, torturing, and murdering its citizens, they appointed a novelist, Ernesto Sabato, to head that commission. The introduction to its final report remains a model of clarity and...