posted on 26 April 2009 08:46
by
Peter Stockwell
Wordfest
The Cambridge Wordfest came up trumps with Michael Morpugos's talk, given to a sell out audience of children. He is a great showman, as well as a great writer, and had the children spellbound. For me he is the best young person's writer around at present, as he deals with real issues and has a comprehensive world view. He writes with skill and sensitivity, educating as well as entertaining. So unlike the other 80% of children's writers who seem to be only interested in fantasy or parochial issues of growing up.
I have finished volume six of A Dance to the Music of Time. Now there will be a hiatus while I save up to buy the next three volumes on Amazon. Another spin-off of massive Local Authority incompetence regarding Cambridge Library is that it's costing me money in books. In the meantime Oxfam came to the rescue, as ever. I am reading. Being Geniuses Together, alternate chapters by Robert McAlmon and Kay Boyle about the amazing literary period in 1920 Paris. Living working and drinking in Paris at the time were, Joyce, Stein, Pound, Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, Djuna Barnes, Man Ray, George Antheil, Sylvia Beach and Isadora and Raymond Duncan. They all knew each other and were a sort of self help group. McAlmon helped publish their work and several people kept Joyce going while he wrote Ulysses, a book that makes A Dance to the Music of Time read like a Sunday tabloid.