Dealing with illiteracy in savvy, secretive ways as a ranch hand, gardener and mountainside handyman, despite the resulting wound to reasoning
The unrelenting nemesis of journalists and editors is a twined one: Space and time.
Time means deadlines, space dominated by journalism’s commercial engine, advertisements, determines how long a story can be. August 4, a discussion here about the cultural and emotional cost of illiteracy in modern societies, used the eye-opening German novel, and film, “The Reader” — and got its tail cropped by space considerations. This lead some readers to believe that in both novel and film forms, “The Reader” attempts to defend an illiterate woman who became a SS guard during World War II. If that were the case, “The Reader” wouldn’t have found a home here.