averilburystedmunds: Cambridge Days

Cambridge Backs

A weekend in Cambridge for the Literary Festival [ 22-26 April] sounds intellectually ideal, and it was! But beyond the intellectual, there were the College gardens and the riverbanks full of daffodils and other blooms; indeed, all was picturesque along the River Cam and the Backs to welcome Cait, Niamh and me as we arrived on a perfect Saturday morning to catch the first talk which promised us enlightenment on The World in A Phrase, being A Brief History of the Aphorism. James Geary, the speaker and author, gave us a quick tour through an impressive list of practioners, in

James Geary: writer, professor, aphorism-collector.

learned while entertaining style, his impact undoubtedly helped by his own attractive appearance, so welcome to the shallower students present. I am presently reading his book which echoes his talk both of which celebrate the delight of the short, witty and philosophical phrases which are indeed aphorisms. Geary’s book is virtually an entertaining tour through the wisest and wittiest sayings over the centuries, exploring the history of aphorisms from ancient China to contemporary ‘sharp practice’ featuring brief biographies of some of the greatest practitioners including ancient sages like Lao-tzu and the Buddha, philosophers like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, writers like George Eliot and Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach; humorists like Mark Twain and Dorothy Parker; activists like James Baldwin and Audre Lorde; poets like Langston Hughes and Kay Ryan and artists like Jenny Holzer and David Byrne. The book, like the talk, is for lovers of words and seekers of wisdom and Geary manages to explore the aphorism in what amounts to a love letter-cum-memoir disguised as a reference book. Fellow aphorists, one might say, fellow fanatics, will love his script.

Gary Stevenson; Ex-Citibank trader turned
inequality activist.

It was a disappointment to learn that the Sunday Room of One’s Own Lecture by Deborah Levy had had, perforce, to be cancelled due to illness though will be delivered at the Winter Festival [Nov 22-26] But we gratefully caught the excellent New Statesman debate that ‘This house believes that Britain’s best days are behind it.’ The basis of the debate was the assertion that there is a widespread mood of public despair at how difficult life has begun and these hard times are seen, not in terms of politically left and right, but through the prism of optimism and pessimism. Among the six first-class debaters was Gary Stevenson, a British You-Tuber, author, economist and former financial trader and we will look at him as he was previously unknown to me, no doubt betraying my limited inner landscape, and he did look interesting! He mentioned en passant, that he was independently wealthy [a self-made millionaire by 21] though frankly through my eyes of relative innocence, he resembled a potentially menacing graduate of a rough inner-city neighbourhood who could ‘take care of himself’ and was signalling that the passer-by should keep his distance. Presumably the ‘independently wealthy’ referred to his own effective financial trading and not to aristocratic parents; indeed, his parents were Mormon.working class AND it was encouraging to read that he was/is an activist against economic equality. I quietly urged my daughter, a college lecturer in Social Sciences to try to get him to give a talk to her students [16-18]. Gary would go down a storm with that age group both for his incipiently threatening appearance and his barely controlled subversive language. He could also quietly let them know he had been expelled at 16 for ‘drug-related transgressions’ and thus win even more plaudits.