Dubai Debate

You have to be careful with language. Old war horses like me hear the word 'ban' and creak out with our rusty swords to ... rally around a flag that wasn't really there ...

said Margaret Atwood, talking about her cancellation at the Dubai Festival before learning the facts of the Geraldine Bedell "banned book" case. (See here and here.)

I react in exactly the same manner to the word (though thereafter any resemblance to Ms Atwood sadly disappears!) and must remind myself to gather up all facts first before humphing in outrage.

Sometimes that's hard to do as the press does so love to sensationalise stories. (Bloggers - inc. myself - are just as bad but at least we have the excuse that we have less access to the sources.)

It's also interesting how the initial shock-horror story travels so widely, but not the more accurate report that comes later ...

It's such a shame that it was a blare of negative publicity that brought the festival to public attention. Kathy Guest in The Independent writes about the event, where :

... for an all-too-fleeting four days last week, the InterContinental hotel in Dubai, Festival City, became an oasis of cultivation in the otherwise featureless landscape of designer labels and oil billionaires.

The debate on censorship went on, with Atwood appearing by video link (top left) and the discussion is reported here by Ed Lake of The Nation.

Penguin in the Doghouse?

Thanks William Shaw for sending me a link to his post re the kerfuffle over the Dubai Festival.

Not all is as it first seemed.

According to Isobel Abulhoul the decision to cancel the launch of the book was communicated to Ms Badell in September ... so why was it only brought to public attention this month?

Margaret Atwood now apparently regrets her decision to withdraw and has :

... come around to Isobel Aboulhou’s view that this was as much a controversy stirred up by Bedell’s publishers as anything to do with censorship. ... On speaking to , the festival’s director, however, she was told that this was not the case, she writes. Rather, the festival director had sent a “candid” and somewhat naive email of rejection, which “was carefully guarded by someone - who? - until now, when it was hurled into the press with great publicity effect, easily stampeding people like me.” Atwood, upset that her principled stance was taken under what she now sees as false pretences, and protective of the “first-time festivalite” Abulhoul, says her “head is spinning” as a result of the controversy.

I think our heads are spinning too. And I must make a note to be a bit more of a sceptic ...

Postscript (24/2/09) :

Margaret Atwood is to take part in the debate on censorhsip via video link.