Magnificent people like Matthew Evans are few and far between | Hanif Kureishi

The former chairman of Faber & Faber was a loyal friend to those he published and a sworn enemy of boredomArtists require solitude to get anything done, but that is not all they need. As they work, they might like to believe that they are outside the market, in a private dreaming space. But artists need to engage the public. They have to keep going, and to make a living. They need contemporaries, supporters and collaborators, people who grasp what they’re up to, and institutions and networks that carry their work to the world – theatres, producers, editors and publishers.Matthew Evans knew a lot about this; his father was a writer. And at Faber he provided his authors with stability and support. But he was personally rebellious and anarchic, and that cheered his writers up because his mischievousness and terror of boredom, habit and respectability reminded us what we were supposed to be doing particularly in the 1980s and early 1990s, during that period of greatest Thatcherite ignorance, destructiveness and philistinism. Once, later, I said to him, “I’ve just been talking to someone who says libraries are irrelevant in the new digital age”, and he replied, “Did you punch him?” Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2016-07-10 00:00:00 UTC ]

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