{"id":2719,"date":"2007-11-28T19:02:50","date_gmt":"2007-11-29T00:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=2719"},"modified":"2007-11-28T19:02:50","modified_gmt":"2007-11-29T00:02:50","slug":"civilization-and-its-discontented","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=2719","title":{"rendered":"Civilization and Its Discontented"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font size=\"4\">Exactly who heeded the call of Abraham? Book touring makes a writer wonder.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nextbook.org\/cultural\/feature.html?id=727&amp;source=email\"><strong>by Shalom Auslander<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I am in Chicago, at the Hopleaf Bar on North Clark Street, one of the last stops on the U.S. portion of my book tour. What happens as I am on my way out of the bar has happened before.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Excuse me,&#8221; a young woman calls. In other cities, it is a young man, or an old man, or an old woman.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Yes?&#8221; I answer.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I was at your reading.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>For a moment I flatter myself and assume she wants a book signed.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And I have to say,&#8221; she continues.<\/p>\n<p>This is the first bad sign. People who say things they &#8220;have&#8221; to say usually say those things with their hands pressed firmly over their ears.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nextbook.org\/cultural\/feature.html?id=727&amp;source=email\">Read the column<\/a>]<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Exactly who heeded the call of Abraham? Book touring makes a writer wonder. by Shalom Auslander I am in Chicago, at the Hopleaf Bar on North Clark Street, one of the last stops on the U.S. portion of my book &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=2719\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-HR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2719\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}