Alan Jacobs


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I am so admiring and jealous of the fact that Greenwald can come up with new ways to say these things that are true and important and need to be said over and over. And he comes up with powerful arguments. And of course he broke the Snowden story, so he’s now become someone who has not just presented opinions, but who has really opened up new windows and doors and made things happen. But the character is thinking: what do well-formed, beautifully compressed opinions actually do when the people on the other side are not listening? Don’t you need people sitting down in the sidewalk? Don’t you need people getting arrested in front of the White House? In the few times that I’ve gone to protests, it’s always hit me that doing things or refusing to move has an expressiveness and directs the concentration in a way that a beautiful op-ed piece doesn’t. The powerlessness of words is what interests me, and what interests Paul. In the end, I’m writing a novel, so what am I saying? The powerless of words? I’m putting it all in a book. So I’m confused.