The Essay

Essays on the underappreciated aspects of well known pieces of culture. Writer Sarfraz Manzoor describes a moment from the film Field of Dreams and what it means to him.

It’s in the minutiae of masterpieces that we feel their thrill and power.

In this series of The Essay, five leading cultural voices choose a great work of art and talk about a small, underappreciated aspect of the piece that carries great meaning for them.

Spectator Literary Editor Sam Leith explores his fascination with a background figure in Judith Kerr’s classic picture book ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea’.

Producer: Sam Peach

Michael Goldfarb looks at five authors and their books on the receiving end of cancel culture in liberal America of the 1960s. Each author and the work being discussed was the subject of a controversy that altered their lives and deeply affected their careers.

In this essay, he focuses on Joan Williams and her novel Old Powder. After her first novel was shortlisted for the National Book Award, this one failed. Did her former lover William Faulkner have something to do with it? For much of the 60s, literary fiction remained a male preserve, Joan Williams looked like being the person to break that mould, then she disappeared. Why?

Michael Goldfarb looks at five authors and their books on the receiving end of cancel culture in liberal America of the 1960s. Each author and the work being discussed was the subject of a controversy that altered their lives and deeply affected their careers.

In this essay, he focuses on Philip Roth. Roth became permanently alienated from American Jews and even his own mother asked him if he was anti-Semitic. In light of his continuous production and the miraculous late flowering of his art, from The Counterlife to The Plot Against America, it's easy to forget that Portnoy’s Complaint, despite its sales, nearly destroyed his career within his own community. It also coloured how he was seen until his death: as a misogynist who, depending on one's view, had to be forgiven because of his talent, or could not be forgiven, because of his talent. The irony is that while many Jews at the time would like to have had Portnoy's Complaint pulled from bookshops and libraries and pulped, his authorised biography, published in 2021, actually was pulled from sale and pulped because the author, Blake Bailey, was accused of sexual assault.

Michael Goldfarb looks at five authors and their books on the receiving end of cancel culture in liberal America of the 1960s. Each author and the work being discussed was the subject of a controversy that altered their lives and deeply affected their careers.

In this essay, he focuses on Norman Mailer. His reputation as a novelist had gone down the toilet before he reinvented himself with the non-fiction novel. But there was a cost. Writers should be read and not heard was the ethos of the profession. But mass media provided authors with many different platforms to reach the public. Mailer was on all of them, courting controversy - too successfully. Mailer was a monstrous misogynist before Harvey Weinstein and #metoo. For a while his talent gave him a pass, and then it didn't.

Michael Goldfarb looks at five authors and their books on the receiving end of cancel culture in liberal America of the 1960s. Each author and the work being discussed was the subject of a controversy that altered their lives and deeply affected their careers.

This essay looks at Amiri Baraka previously known as LeRoi Jones. He was seen as a genuine heir to James Baldwin. A decade younger than Baldwin, Jones/Baraka arrived in Greenwich Village just as the Beat scene was reaching its zenith. He wrote poetry and award-winning off-Broadway plays that dealt with race with the greater fire and frankness the 60s demanded. Then in one public appearance, he cancelled himself with comments about the Jewish young men Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, who were murdered with James Chaney in Mississippi. The story of a career ruined and a notorious evening that split the liberal coalition in New York, a fracture that continues to this day.

The 1960s are celebrated for the paradigm shift in American society. This shift was reflected in art and culture as well as politics. But these great changes were not accomplished without controversy. Even in the most slow-flowing art form, literature, great controversies burst out that are now forgotten, but they anticipate what is going on with today's cancel culture. They occurred without the multiplier effect of social media but dominated not just book pages but the society at large.

Michael Goldfarb looks at five authors and their books on the receiving end of this cancel culture in liberal America of the 1960s. Each author and the work being discussed was the subject of a controversy that altered their lives and deeply affected their careers.

In this essay, he focuses on William Styron and his book 'The Confessions of Nat Turner' and asks can a white man write about a black revolutionary hero? Is this taking cultural appropriation too far? Styron was a southerner writing about an important event in his local history. The story was part of his culture, as well. But as a white man does he have the right to imagine the thoughts of an enslaved black man?

Writers choose a Black Country scene to reveal something of this strangely hidden region. Roy McFarlane is revealing secrets about the area of Bilston in the Black Country. His focus is on Big Lizzy, an enormous blast furnace that dominated the skyline of the Black Country for decades. And also the black-owned Rising Star Night Club and Major's iconic Bilston chip shop.

Roy was born in Birmingham but spent many years living in the Black Country. He’s a Poet and Playwright; has held the role of Birmingham Poet Laureate and is currently the Canal Laureate for Britain. His debut poetry collection, Beginning With Your Last Breath, was followed by The Healing Next Time which was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes award and longlisted for the Jhalak Prize.

Producer: Rosie Boulton