BOOKS: ESSAYS - They're Trying to Destroy Me with Neglect! ; Obedience, Struggle and Revolt by David Hare FABER Pounds 12.99 Pounds 11.99 (P&P FREE) 08700 798 897; Political Art May Need a Defender but, Observes Johann Hari, Playwright David Hare Is the Wrong Man for the Job

Hare, David, The Independent on Sunday (London, England)

The title of David Hare's collected lectures is borrowed from a (pretty irrelevant) Balzac quote. If he was going to settle for a dull title anyway, he should have simply called this book 'In Defence of Political Art'. The animating force behind all 15 lectures is a celebration of artistic rebels with a cause: the playwrights, moviemakers and novelists whose purpose is not to distract or tickle society but to change it.

Hare has always given good rant, and there are a few fantastic flash- moments here: 'What school of Hello-magazine-style criticism is it which insists a play about your own family must be hard, but a play about the intellectual disgrace of the Renaissance …

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Publication information: Article title: BOOKS: ESSAYS - They're Trying to Destroy Me with Neglect! ; Obedience, Struggle and Revolt by David Hare FABER Pounds 12.99 Pounds 11.99 (P&P FREE) 08700 798 897; Political Art May Need a Defender but, Observes Johann Hari, Playwright David Hare Is the Wrong Man for the Job. Contributors: Hare, David - Author. Newspaper title: The Independent on Sunday (London, England). Publication date: August 14, 2005. Page number: 20. © 2009 The Independent on Sunday. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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