Salam Pax, bound
: Tom Coates got hold of an advance copy of Salam Pax’ book, set to be released in the U.S. in October, says Amazon (but on Sept. 5 in Britain, says Amazon there).
Coates says that in present tense, he found Salam’s weblog “essentially unreadable,” but he decrees that in hindsight, it is “an abiding – albeit small – artefact of life on the ground during the second war in Iraq.”
He also says — and I agree with this — that because Salam was a witness from there, not here, he helped us listen to new perspectives. The same can be said of Iranian weblogs, I’d say.
: I wonder whether Salam’s 15 minutes are long since over. I wonder whether his book will sell now, so many months after the war. The reason I wonder is that the buzz about him has subsided greatly recently, partly because he has had less to say online, partly because he is no longer the only witness there.
