Ere Terry

When Terry Eagleton was my tutor at Oxford I totally loved the moment when the Cuban embassy phoned up to invite him to give some talks. Then a bit later when I invited him to NYU he told me this story.

Working in a supermarket as I had quite recently done (we were swapping stories) one of his coworkers caught him reading a book and admiringly said: “Ere, Terry, you've read more books [Lancashire accent] this summer than than I've done in me fooking life.”

Brilliant!

So I loved this review of his latest (sorry, who sent it? Thank you Rick Cliff and Dirk equally!). It says true things about him. And it looks like the kind of book one thought he might eventually write. He was never fond of nihilism, even in the 80s when you sort of had to be fond of it--oh whatever you have to be fond of it now too. In my line of work. Which is not in a supermarket.