When Suzanne Nossel was hired to head up PEN America it seemed like a strange choice, and my sense was that she didn’t really want the job. No idea how that panned out, but here she is taking a very strange tack on a very serious problem. Fiction used to be a means of cultural liberation, but now it’s taking on a different role — maybe additional, maybe instead of — as an instrument of revanchism and oppression. So how should advocates of free speech respond? This is a really deep question, and “why can’t they always be puppies?!” answers won’t fly, imo. Nossel’s answer is pretty much what I’d expect: what someone who doesn’t really want to head up PEN would say.