I have, in a quiet way, been absorbed by the after-story of Pat Kavanagh the literary agent who died, aged 68, within a month of having been diagnosed as having a brain tumour.
Some facts that add to the quiet interest: she was married to author Julian Barnes, who before her diagnosis or death published his meditation on dying, Nothing To Be Frightened Of, and she was also the lover of Jeanette Winterson, for whom she left Barnes for a period. I admire both Barnes and Winterson and the love triangle always intrigues.
How sad then to see this account in The Telegraph that Winterson, who was absent, no doubt for reasons of compassion for the family,from Pat Kavanagh's funeral, was not mentioned in a will that did make a number of specific bequests.
But the killer line, is,to my mind, this one:
"Although Winterson, 49, was not present at her former lover's funeral, she paid tribute to her on her blog and said: "I wrote The Passion for her, and I loved her very much."
In such an impoverished national emotional landscape, where the death of a talentless, ignorant woman like Jade Goody becomes 'news', yes real hard news, where does an honest, uncompromising, uncomfortable comment like Winterson's sit? When the cultural discourse is so debased and corrupted, how do we hear the authentic voices?
Well, ignoring propaganda is one strategy (and as a bonus this post has, to my mind, the single best line from a blog for a long time... "the Leni Riefenstahl of Richard & Judy's Britain") and another strategy is to follow one's own interests quietly. Though that does make blog posting a little intermittent.
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