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. But what, Baddiel asked, happens now that Great Men can no longer use their genius as an excuse to treat their wives and children badly? If we no longer tolerate the errant Great Man, then what can we Lesser Men look up to? What is masculinity now?
Baddiel spoke of the failings of men (real and imagined) like Eli Gold. He is not in awe of sexual immorality and he is free from any equally adolescent cringe towards American literature. But he also pondered whether such men had something we don’t — vitality. Baddiel is also worried about how men can be real people if they’ve no way to be real men. “Inauthenticity is a terrible thing”, he said.
Baddiel and his interviewer Suzi Feay spent a good forty minutes chewing over these issues. But when it came to audience questions, the focus shifted. The great washed (no riff-raff at the Wordfest) wanted to know about the creative process. “Is this a response to your own mortality?”; “Do you discuss what you write with your wife?”; “What’s the most difficult part of the writing process, and how do you get over it?”. The Ungreat Man’s answers were “maybe”, “we’re not married”, and “internet porn is too distracting”.
This is the way literature is often discussed today. The professionals pick out a theme which allows them to diagnose past, present, and future, while the public get to chat to celebrities. Actually talking about books is very difficult, especially literary books. If we ask why they’re important, the usual answer is that they’re about important things. But why do we need made up stories to talk about important things? And why is talking about imaginary people a sensible thing to do? That’s a real mystery. Maybe someone will talk about it one day.
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