I guess it’s fair to say I was a bit of weird teenager. There probably weren’t many other people my age who would rush home most nights in order to catch Ideas on the radio. But I did. I loved that show (I still enjoy it more often than not when I catch it now, and I have a ton of episodes of the podcast backed up) and I wanted to grow up to be Lister Sinclair.
I listened to a ton of these programs growing up, and I even ordered a number of printed transcripts of some of the shows (this was pre-Internet, remember). They’re around here in a folder somewhere.
The best thing about Ideas, though, was that once a year they broadcast The Massey Lectures. I was fifteen years old when I heard Chomsky deliver Necessary Illusions over five nights. That was the first one I heard, I think. I think it would be fair to say it blew my mind.
In the years before that, the lecturers were an incredibly distinguished group: Northrop Frye, John Kenneth Galbraith, Martin Luther King Jr., Claude Lévi-Strauss, and even this year’s Nobel laureate, Doris Lessing, in 1985. And that trend has certainly continued to the current day.
Every year since then I’ve looked forward to the Massey lectures. In the interim I’ve acquired recordings of many of the older lectures, and purchased the book forms of many others. I believe I’ve heard or read every year’s since Chomsky, along with many of the older ones.
For the record, my favourite was John Ralston Saul‘s The Unconscious Civilization. It is my strongly-held opinion that every thinking person should read it. Several other smart people agree with me, since the book form won the Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction in 1996, and managed to be a bestseller nationally. I’ve given away about a half-dozen copies over the years.
Well, this year the Massey lecturer is Alberto Manguel. I’m a pretty big fan–I’ve got around a linear foot of shelf full of Manguel’s non-fiction works, but apparently I’ve been missing out on a large number of anthologies he has edited–so I was pretty excited. Also his lecture topic “The City of Words” is right up my alley. Here’s the short description:
The end of ethnic nationalism, building societies around sets of common values, seems like a good idea. But something is going wrong. In the 2007 Massey Lectures, writer Alberto Manguel takes a fresh look at some of the problems we face, and suggests we should look at what stories have to teach us about society. “How do stories help us perceive ourselves and others?” he asks. “How can stories lend a whole society an identity…?” From Gilgamesh to the Bible, from Don Quixote to The Fast Runner, Alberto Manguel explores how books and stories hold the secret keys to what binds us together.
Imagine my delight when my wife came home to tell me that the first of this year’s lectures was being presented here in Halifax!
We got tickets, and attended the lecture last night. It was excellent, although I had some concerns about the relentlessly heroic view he had of the role of storyteller, which I hope will be addressed in later lectures in the series. Manguel stayed after the lecture to chat with people (eat your heart out, Jeff Ford!) and sign copies of the book. He committed to staying until everyone who wanted a signature got one, and since there were easily 700 people at the lecture, he might have been there a while.
As I mentioned just above, the book form of the full lecture series is already available (I have a copy to chew over during the next couple of weeks), and Ideas will be broadcasting the lectures on the week of November 5th to 9th. Since the CBC runs over 30 streams to the nets in several timezones, anyone in the world can listen. Also, Ideas will be podcasting the lecture series, but I think it will run 5 consecutive Mondays in the podcast, rather than 5 consecutive days, which should make it easy for any of you who are interested to get a copy of the series.
If you do catch the lectures, you may get a chance to hear me! There is a Q&A period after each lecture, and they usually include at least some of the questions in the broadcast. I asked what I hope isn’t a stupid question, and there’s a decent chance if you catch the broadcast you’ll hear me doing it.
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