Authors Electric

                                                                                           A Look at the Booker Prize for Literature     I recently noted that Anne Michaels had been shortlisted for this year’s Booker prize for her novel  Held (2023). I had read her earlier novel,  Fugitive Pieces  (1996), about the displacement of children during World War Two, some years ago and I had included discussion of it in a course I was teaching about Canadian Literature for The Workers’ Educational Association (WEA).  Held , published many years later and which I received as a Christmas present, is a very different book: it is an account of the development of the generations within a family, who are dealing with events from the early twentieth to the twenty-first century.   I have some history with the Booker prize. When I began teaching literature to a WEA group in the 2000s, I needed some guidance in making a choice of novels that we could read together. These WEA classes had a remarkable

Many years ago, at the height of Britain’s football hooliganism problems, I came across a delicious comedy sketch on BBC Radio 4 which went something like this:  Policeman : I'm arresting you for affray leading to grievous bodily harm, with intention to commit. Do you have anything to say?  Lout : Yeah, well, it were like this. Me and my mates was just leavin’ Waiting for Godot at the Prince Edward theatre, like, when these guys come up to us and start rantin’ and swearin’ that Beckett’s rubbish, everyone knows that, not a patch on Chekhov whose Three Sisters could wipe the floor wiv us, yeah, and our muvvers too. Well, that crossed a line that did, I’m not takin’ that lyin’ down. So yes, officer, I did clock ‘im one but there’s provocation, see.  Laugh-out loud comedy, ah those were the days.  Having the temerity to issue a challenge.  Photo by Daisa TJ: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-holding-sword-3408420/ Anyway, this popped into my mind because recently I had the temerity