A week of debatable pleasures

It has been an…interesting week. I've been marking essays (some astonishingly brilliant, others 'requiring improvement'), teaching my first-year drama module hilariously entitled – in my view alone – 'Making a Scene', and we took all the students to see the National Theatre's touring production of Hedda Gabler. I'm finding it really hard not to pronounce Hedda with the 'th' sound of Welsh 'dd'. Some of the students had never been to the theatre before, so I'm looking forward to their views on it. Mine are certainly mixed: the contemporary setting rather obscured the play's examination of Scandinavian late-19th century social mores, but some of the acting was impressive, and the set was very striking.

I read Jeff Noon's Falling Out of Cars at the start of the week too: I'm already a huge admirer of his work, and this one was rather wonderful: like one of Ballard's mid-period surrealist novels with added character depth. It's about a Britain whose inhabitants are made ill by data and sensory overload: pictures, words, broadcasts, signs, colours and sounds become oppressive and unbearable. The narrative is bitty and contradictory, broken up to fit the scenario. I liked it a lot. Now I'm onto Keith Thomas's medieval-to-Renaissance cultural history Religion and the Decline of Magic: it's enormous but wonderful, and I'm learning in detail about a lot of things I knew in outline.

Against my better judgement, I went to see The Post last night. I'm a sucker for newspaper movies, from The Front Page to the Guardian bits in one of the Bourne films. Balanced against that: Hanks and Spielberg. In the end, I liked it a lot. Meryl Streep is wonderful, Spielberg basically reproduced the newsroom/printing press scenes from All The President's Men, and every line dripped with Trump resonance. And it has the awful Chad from In The Loop, playing another WASP git. Try not to dwell on the irony of a defence of press freedom in the face of dishonest, oppressive politicians being made by Twentieth Century Fox.



However, the absolute highlight of the week has been my surprisingly magnified role in the city's Literature Festival: a panel discussion examining Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech 50 years on has suffered some unfortunate panel changes, some considerably heightened language, attracted an SWP demonstration objecting to the presence of a local MEP (who is despicable) and some frenzied politicking. I've found myself in the Editor's office, on the receiving end of rather aggressive phone calls, and talking to the police. It's brought up familiar issues about freedom of speech, no-platforming, the boundaries of fair comment, and a not inconsiderable degree of disapproval from people who just want a quiet life and would like to blame me for an event I didn't propose, organise or want and won't be at. I think it's fair to say that promotions and teaching awards will not be forthcoming in the near future. Or the far future. Just like the past, now I come to think of it…

Enjoy your weekend. Next week, unless things go badly, I can get back to reading and talking about books.