Cambridge academics spend a lot of time worrying about how to persuade taxpayers to keep them in ivory towers. Perhaps it’s for that reason that, twice a year, Cambridge Wordfest invites the reading public into the lecture theatre to be reminded how pleasant it is to chat about books.
David Baddiel was there this weekend to discuss his latest novel. The Death of Eli Gold is about a heroically macho American novelist who finds that death is no respecter even of sexual reputations. Baddiel spoke about his desire to interrogate the fate of the Great Man in the modern world. Gold was one of these men. His artistic vocation was a licence to live to excess, with wives and children cast aside when inconvenient; any resemblance to Norman Mailer or Saul Bellow is entirely deliberate.
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