Sunday Stir: Grumpy old man? Nordic Romantic?

 

Horace Engdahl of the Swedish Academy of Sciences has annoyed a lot of people with his comments that creative writing courses and writers’ grants are  undermining the richness and  imaginative range of today’s generation of writers. Writers, he thinks, have become institutionalised, and are locked into an unhealthy symbiosis with the literary institutions.

Ghosts (2) – Andrew O’Hagan and Julian Assange

 

           

Gert was amused last year when the memoir of a – well, not famously eloquent – footballer came out with the title In my own words and the byline with (name of ghostwriter). She was reminded of the French film Mensonges et Trahisons in which a ghostwriter is hired to write the autobiography of a famous soccer star.