The age of anxiety:

[Mithalwen]

I heard this interview on Radio 4's Today programme last Friday about a symposium at Brunel, and have transcribed it since it will be available online only for a week.

It references The Lord of the Rings in comparison with Pullman's Dark Materials.

Sarah Montague :
Are we in an age of anxiety? And if so what effect is it having on culture?
....

Fay Weldon is professor of creative writing at Brunel University, Robert Eaglestone is professor of contemporary literature and thought at London University.

Do you accept, first of all RE, that we are in an age of anxiety?

RE: I think we have been in an age of anxiety for a very long time, for the last 150 years or so. What is interesting is what those anxieties are and how they've changed .

SM: And you think they have had an effect on culture and the way people write?

RE: I think they have absolutely had an effect on culture on people's writing people's thinking and as asour anxieties change and develop so writers respond to them in different sorts of ways.

SM: Before we look at how, FW.Do you accept that we are in an age of anxiety that has gone back 150 years or is it more recent?

I think it goes back even further, if you go back to Bocaccio he is writing in time of plague and managing to frame stories within that extreme anxiety. It gathers momentum and pace and yes, we are running scared.

SM: Running scared? Runing scared of what?

FW: We are running scared of who is going to publish us. We are running scared of the present. It is quite difficult to get students to write about now becasue it is too great to encompass.They like to write either about a dystopia a few years ahead, which they are very keen on, or what happened in the past - or even ten years ago. Anything but now.

SM:Hasn't that always been the case? Now is always difficult for people.

FW: Now is difficult but for the last 150 years indeed there has seemed to be something we could do about it. Writers have tended to be on the left - not the right -though some very good ones areon the right. And they have always felt that there was something they could do. If they only write properly and well enough then the world will be saved or Utopia will come.That if only you can improve people's understanding and comprehension of what they are and the world are (sic) there will be no more ignorance, peace and love will arrive, but we don't feel that anymore.

SM: Prof Eaglestone, do you find that with your students ?

RE: I think that my students are keen to write about the issues of the day and current anxieties. And I think Fay Weldon is right about a lot of what she said but what I think is important about the current age of anxiety is that as it might be before there are always two sides, them and us and you can choose which side
to be on and you had a set stock of responses .

I think one of the things that has changed now is that it is a lot more complicated and murky. One example you can see from Children's Literature is the difference between the Lord of the Rings which is written after the shadow of two world wars and written in the cold war, and in that everyone is very anxious but it is quite clear who are the goodies and who are the baddies. Whereas in the recent Golden Compass, Philip Pullman's books it is very murky and unclear no one is sure who's good or who's bad and people's motives are unclear... So its much more questions raised of judgement and trying to make decisions rather than belonging to a side.

SM: Sounds much more interesting? Fay Weldon?

FW: Yes it is but it's a difficult thing to do - if you like we are in the age of therapy too. Writing tends to be about how we face our own internal problems rather than external problems but they're pretty anxious making

SM:What would you point to now that is causing such difficulties?

FW: Good lord! Global warming..

SM: That tops your list ?

FW: Yeah yeah-
No, no! The collapse of civilisation as of last month, collapse of capitalism, collapse of everything we know. Of course it is there in the writers imagination all the time. It is the scenario of disaster ahead that writers tend to live in and actually sometimes quite enjoy!!


I thought this was quite an interesting perspective - and comments?