I wasn’t going to come today. Partly because the act of coming here—to America, as a non-American—is now a fraught, stressful, and even dangerous proposition for millions. Also: What’s the point? That’s what an old friend, another writer, asked me. By this he meant: Why talk about arts and letters when people are being gunned down in the streets? I’m going to answer the question as best I can, but I’ll say first that when I looked at the list of previous speakers and spotted the name E.M. Forster—and the year 1949—I was curious. I wondered what he could possibly have had to say to a room full of artists in the wreckage of World War II. So I dug up Forster’s remarks. But it turned out I’d already read them—and dismissed them—years ago, when I found them in his collection Two Cheers for Democracy . The essay is called “Art for Art’s Sake .” I prepared to reread it, not expecting much. “Art for Art’s Sake . ” Really? Nothing could be less fashionable. It wasn’t fashionable in 1949.…