The Impact of Steve by Bill Kirton
This has nothing to do with the post but what the hell, I won an award. It’s an anecdote I’ve aired before, but it sums up so much that I love about writing that I never tire of it. First, though, the wider context. I was so lucky with my working life, getting paid as I was for sitting with intelligent, interested young people, mostly talking about books. OK, there was marking, exams, prose translations and stuff, but they, too, were all about words, language, thinking and having to articulate those thoughts as well as encourage others to do the same. Most of the texts were prescribed, but I could add my own choices, too. And, anyway, the set texts were always examples of the best from medieval times to the present. So the thread running through all of it was the exercise and encouragement of articulacy and literacy. The fact that I was in a French department and dealing with a ‘foreign’ literature with its own, different cultural drivers and conventions added to the ma...