By Denise Tessier
“A Time of Dire Need for Courageous Communicators”
NMPW President Sherri Burr awards Courageous Communicator Award to George RR Martin
George R.R. Martin has received and been nominated for numerous awards – the Nebula, the Locus, the Bram Stoker, the Hugo and more; film versions of his novels have won Emmys. But the author who has sold more than 100 million books says the award he received last month from New Mexico Press Women – the “Courageous Communicator” – really made him pause and reflect.
“We are in a time of dire need for Courageous Communicators,” he told those at NMPW’s 75th anniversary conference on March 16. And he wondered aloud, was he truly among the courageous?
During a generously long and thoughtful keynote speech at the NMPW awards banquet, he pondered this question after grimly assessing the pulse of free speech: “We used to have it here in the United States. I think we may be living in one of those dark periods.” And he warned his audience at the outset: “This is not a safe space. This is not a safe speech. I don’t like being told what words to use.”
He took listeners on a historical tour of banned speech, of truth and lies, quoting along the way some of his “heroes,” like George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut, Oscar Wilde, and Voltaire. He quoted William Butler Yeats’ The Second Coming:
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
In 1644, John Milton urged England’s Parliament to let truth and falsehood “grapple in a free and open encounter,” believing that “truth will surely prevail.” “He was a godly man,” Martin said of Milton, one who felt that “to be truly moral, we must be free to grapple with immorality.” In 1667, Milton’s Paradise Lost was “promptly banned.”
Literature, art, journalism and democracy itself are in peril, Martin warned. He noted that 41 states have or are considering banning books, with so-called morality groups turning in lists of dozens of deemed offenders, including “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the Harper Lee novel that consistently tops the list of educators, librarians and regular citizens as one of America’s best.
Martin said he has come to expect book banning and censorship from the right, but to have it come now from the “woke” left, he said, “appalls me.”
Joe McCarthy’s “red scare” inquisitions in the early 1940s, he noted, ended many careers, including that of the highest-paid writer in Hollywood, Dalton Trambo. Trambo, whose credits include Spartacus, Roman Holiday and Johnny Got His Gun, summarized that period in what is considered a treatise on free speech and thought, Time of the Toad. Censorship became a part of the process in both film and TV with the advent of “sensitivity readers” (censors), Martin said.
“People are afraid now, including me,” Martin said. “Being named a Courageous Communicator makes me wonder if I’ve done enough.” Martin then recognized that Meow Wolf, the wildly popular immersive art experience in which he invested millions, had recently canceled the sold-out appearance of Jewish-American singer Matisyahu after the venue was inundated with threats of protest from pro-Palestinian groups the day of the show. (That cancellation, and subsequent cancellation in Santa Fe of a talk by the Israeli general counsul have since sparked a series of letters, columns and a pro-freedom of speech editorial in the Santa Fe New Mexican.)
Unfamiliar with this entertainer, Martin said looked to the internet and still wasn’t sure what to make of Matisyahu’s art – based on the Chicago Tribune’s performance description of a “soul-shaking brand of dancehall reggae . . .that captures both the jam band vibe of Phish and the ska–punk of Sublime.” Martin was certain, however, of how he felt about the cancellation.
“Those people who take credit (for the cancellation) and are proud are wrong,” he said simply.
He noted that another of his investments, the Jean Cocteau theater in Santa Fe, was among the few brave enough to screen “The Interview” after threats from its satirical target, Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. At the NMPW banquet, Martin’s Beastly Books had a table that sold not only his works, but banned books, including The Handmaid’s Tale and two James Bond books by Ian Fleming.
Martin lauded the bravery of Alexei Navalny and quoted British writer Beatrice Hall, who in her 1906 biography The Friends of Voltaire, wrote: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” as an illustration of Voltaire’s beliefs.
Who gets to decide what is hate speech? Martin asked. And “the Steal,” he noted, “is a lie that refuses to die.”
We have to “grit our teeth and learn to live with hate and falsehoods,” Martin concluded. As for being a Courageous Communicator, “I will try to do better in the future. I promise.
“All of us need to do better.”