The Price of Literature

At Manchester on October 12th, starting a course of free monthly lectures on Literature and Culture.

It turned out to be all a bit Cold War: no publicity, no poster; go to the Committee Room on the second floor, don’t make eye contact, give the secret knock and if you’re on the list you might be let in…

OK not quite as cloak and dagger as that, but all the same this was an under-the radar event. Lucky no-one is reading this-

The University shut down its Courses for the Public department in July. Just closed the doors on the public of Manchester. I might have a rant another time about why this is a BAD THING.

The English department, not as evil as the University as a whole, decided to carry on with this course, organised in association with the library and presented by English department staff giving up their time for free. Definitely a GOOD THING.

But the money grubbing accountants who run the University now are not easy to hide from-
-and if they find out that someone is running a course that is both FREE and FIVE TIMES OVERSUBSCRIBED, they would insist on trying to make money from it.

This from a University where the £80,000 a year being paid to Martin Amis looks like good value compared to the £250,000 given to Joseph Stiglitz to do nothing noticeable for the Business School.

I was double booked on the Monday of the event – the Great Man himself (Martin Amis, that is) was talking to Will Self on Literature and Sex at the University – for £8 a head. I think I made the right choice.

Patricia Ducker did a great job on NeoVictorian literature, with The French Lieutenant’s Woman as the set text. Not exactly my genre, in fact I didn’t consciously know it existed, but the point of this course is to widen my horizons. The only two texts I’ve ever formally studied were Julius Caesar and The Crucible for ‘O’-level.

Which is part of the reason I think Lifelong Learning is a Good Thing.