Glitterature

I think it's brilliant that the BBC is running a series about books and literature and it is great to see interesting programmes popping up on both the television and the radio.  I was particularly looking forward to Sebastian Faulks' series on writing fiction, but my disappointment in the first episode means that I haven't bothered to watch the second.

I had the distinct impression that the BBC lacked the courage of its convictions.  Perhaps they were a little nervous about featuring something "elitist" or "arty" at prime time on a Saturday, but in a bid to make the programme as accessible and popular as possible they turned it into something that felt more like a celebrity travelogue than a literary exploration.  It can't just be me who thinks that writing fiction and reading it are profoundly interesting in themselves, yet the dear old Beeb seemed to have little confidence in the subject they had chosen. Sebastian Faulks popped up on a desert island (cf Robinson Crusoe), in New York and London and a host of other exotic locations, each one as glittering and glamorous as the last. I would have loved to have seen him sitting at his desk, talking about his work.  I would have been really interested to hear about his preoccupations: what challenges him, what bores him, what intrigues him, what he feels his strengths and weaknesses are - he could have talked about that sort of stuff for hours and I would have been rapt.  As it was, I kept expecting to bump into Judith Chalmers doing her travel turn...

Faulks' theme was the hero and he talked interestingly enough about the concept of an ordinary man in an extraordinary situation, wrestling with internal and external problems, where the greatest thing he has to conquer is himself.. His theory that the idea of a hero as an individual was knocked for six by the collective slaughter of the First World War, paving the way for the antihero was interesting, but what could have been a masterclass (Michael Caine did some wonderful ones about film acting a while back) turned into something bright and shiny and insubstantial - lipservice to literature - and there's plenty of that around, as it is.