Today David Brooks nominated some worthy magazine pieces to remember from 2008, but surely all living writers of 2008 were trumped by the magnificent essay published in last week's New Yorker by Mark Twain, The Privilege of the Grave, the opening to which you can read below.
No short writing could be more to the point, or better stated, richer, or more true. If Twain's greatness was in question, which it is not, this essay would redeem him.
Although written in 1905, it's never been published before.
ABSTRACT: ANNALS OF DEMOCRACY about exercising free speech from the grave. Its occupant has one privilege which is not exercised by any living person: free speech. The living man is not really without this privilege-strictly speaking-but as he possess it merely as an empty formality, and knows better than to make use of it, it cannot be seriously regarded as an actual possession. As an active privilege, it ranks with the privilege of committing murder: we may exercise it if we are willing to take the consequences. There is not one individual who is not the possessor of dear and cherished unpopular convictions which common wisdom forbids him to utter. When an entirely new and untried political project is sprung upon the people, they are startled, anxious, timid, and for a time they are mute, reserved, noncommittal. Free speech is the privilege of the dead, the monopoly of the dead. They can speak their honest minds without offending. We may disapprove of what they say, but we do not insult them, we do not revile them, as knowing they cannot now defend themselves. If they should speak, it would be found that in matters of opinion no departed person was exactly what he had passed for in life. They would realize, deep down, that they, and whole nations along with them, are not really what they seem to be-and never can be.
The New Yorker hasn't posted the full piece, unfortunately, but you can find it in the last issue of the year, for the 22nd and 29th. Here's a nice pic of the writer...
