“Should a writer have a social purpose? Any honest writer is bound to become a critic of the society he lives in, and sometimes, like Mark Twain or Kurt Vonnegut or Leo Tolstoy or Francois Rabelais, a very harsh critic indeed. The others are sycophants, courtiers, servitors, entertainers. Shakespeare was a sychophant; however, he was and is also a very good poet, and so we continue to read him.” WritersSocial CriticsSocial Purpose Book:Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast Source: Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast