On Art in Times of Economic Crisis: Jeanette Winterson Speaks and We Do Not Fail To Listen!
In which The Gay Recluse microblogs.
Jeannette Winterson in The Times of London writes:
If you believe, as I do, that there is such a thing as a creative continuum common to everyone, it is not difficult to believe that everyone benefits from exposure to, and participation in, creative endeavour. Capitalism has doomed most people to meaningless jobs by day and passive consumer pleasures for the rest of the time. Creativity is about engagement, prompting us to reconfigure what it means – and what it costs – to be content.
I have been reading Sheila Rowbotham’s truly wonderful biography of Edward Carpenter, an early socialist pioneer, who in the 1880s gave up his smart life at Cambridge and built a modest house and market garden outside Sheffield, where he put into practice ideas about living simply and sustainably…Carpenter was homosexual.*
Needless to say, we have always loved JW! Read the rest here! Thanks to Reader CBNY (via Maitresse).
*Like Henry David Thoreau, obvs!
Filed under: Capitalism, Communism, Dissonance, Gay, Writers-British | 2 Comments
Tags: Art Is God, Edward Carpenter, God Is Art, Henry David Thoreau, Jeanette Winterson, Microblogging, The Times of London
The Gay Recluse 
Makes me want to read the book now, too. Makes me dream, also, of some 19th-century fantasia of free, intellectual, utopian, authentic homosexuality. As if there could be such a thing. Wasn’t that supposed to evolve after Stonewall? Thanks for the post. :)
We have a lonnnnnng way to go, C! But thanks for the tip…