I don’t always agree with Williams, but he almost always makes me think and sometimes even changes my mind.
- ?“What our society sorely misses now is not some sterling ideological consistency but rather a genuine liberalism that is strong and supple enough to look for ways to build on who we are, in all our human incongruity.” (From “An Incoherent Truth,”
February 2020)
- ?“The Haitian-Canadian writer Dany Laferrière—who fled the dictatorship of ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier to work as a janitor in Montreal before becoming the second black member of the inner sanctum of French literary culture, the Académie Francaise—struck a similar note on a recent panel we participated in together on the subject of race, gender, and religion. How, the moderator asked, might we break out of those impermeable prisons of identity that the world thrusts us in? ‘Suppose the problem is resolved,’ Laferrière responded. That is, act as if the solution were mapped out completely. What would it look like? This supposition tricks the mind into abandoning the realm of total uncertainty.” (From “Unending Struggle,”
August 2021)
- ?“To make space for all, we will need to learn to see ourselves more intricately, and to find points of commonality that we may have overlooked at first?glance.” (From “Name Stakes,”
June 2021)
- “Interactions on social media seep offline into our real lives, and the results are toxic. A culture in which everyone is constantly on edge, waiting to be ambushed, screenshotted, ratioed, dunked on, and potentially fired, is not healthy. Equality in mutual insecurity is a negative equality. Genuine, positive equality can only be achieved through mutual security, which requires maximal tolerance and freedom.” (From “A Game of Chance,
” October 2020)
- ?“The human spirit, after all, is irrepressible and capable of creating and appreciating lasting works of ambivalent meaning and beauty in the midst of catastrophe—the canon is full of them, and the truths they speak do not respect our superficial boundaries.” (From “Campaign Literature,”
April 2021)
