Summary
Why We Need the Novel Now. Man Booker Prize winner Howard Jacobson delivers a keynote lecture and talks to presenter Shahidha Bari and an audience at the Southbank Centre in London as part of the Man Booker 50 Festival. In the age of Twitter and no-platforming, Jacobson argues that the novel has never been more necessary.
Howard Jacobson won the Man Booker Prize in 2010 for The Finkler Question and was shortlisted for J in 2014
Producer: Zahid Warley
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.0 | Hello, I'm Shah Hadabari. |
| 0:33.6 | Welcome to BBC Radio 3's Arts and Ideas discussion program, |
| 0:42.3 | which brings together leading artists, writers and thinkers in conversation and debate. |
| 0:45.0 | If you enjoy what you hear, do subscribe. |
| 0:49.0 | Search for the Arts and Ideas podcast wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:51.7 | And while you're there, please rate and review us. |
| 0:53.5 | It will help other people find us too. This is the BBC. |
| 1:00.1 | Clever, comic and wise is how the judges described the book that won my guest, the |
| 1:04.9 | Man Booker Prize in 2010. There's laughter there, they said, but it's laughter in the dark. |
| 1:11.4 | He's the author of 15 novels and a columnist and essayist. |
| 1:14.8 | He was born into a Jewish family in Manchester |
| 1:17.0 | and studied English at Cambridge under the literary critic F.R. Levis. |
| 1:21.2 | He had a miserable stint as a lecturer at a Midlands Polytechnic |
| 1:24.7 | before the success of his first book book coming from behind, a campus novel |
| 1:29.4 | that opens with an academic pants down in flagrante delicto. Sexual entanglement, doleful |
| 1:36.8 | introspection, thwarted ambition and the experience of being Jewish in Britain are what he's |
| 1:42.3 | been writing about for over 30 years now, and always with intelligence |
| 1:46.2 | and aplomb. He's here now |
| 1:48.1 | at the South Bank Centre in London to deliver |
... |
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