Im stephen sackur. Is the way we use words changing . Most of us probably write less than we used to, read less than we used to, and spend far more time staring at screens and tapping out messages. Does it matter to our relationships, our politics, our culture . Well, my guest today is conviced it does. Howard jacobsons meditations on life, love, jewishness, and a whole lot more have won him awards, including the man booker prize. But is he an artist swimming against an irresistible cultural tide . Howard jacobson, welcome to hardtalk. I am delighted to be here. Thank you for having me on. I want to ask you to reflect on a long writing career. How long, do you think, it took to you to find your own authentic writers voice . 20 years. 20 years from being from finishing university, and thinking im out in the world, and now im going to write, and 20 years before i could write anything that looked to me like a book. Im tempted to ask, then, what kept you. That is what many people asked. Especially those who thought i would never be a novelist anyway. And i worried, myself, about it. My father used to say, well, where is it, then . That spurred me on. That must have annoyed you. I think my problem was that perhaps a bit over educated. I had been educated to revere the classic so much, to revere dh lawrence and tolstoy and dostoevsky and dickens. If i could not be them, i didnt want to be anyone. So you wanted to be literary. Perhaps you were not confident in your own take on the world and your own voice, that it was worth listening to . Dead right. If what you had been reading was the great writers, and i revered them, and you think you do not measure up to that. At 18 and 25, i did not measure up to dostoevsky. I wouldnt swear to it that i measured up now, but i was certainly nowhere near to it. It was only by lowering my expectations of what i was going to do, and writing not a great, massive, tragic novel about the state of the world, but a comic novel about what it is like to be miserable as a lecturer at a midlands polytechnic. When i did that, is when i got going. What do you think changed for you, for a guy who wanted to write in a literary fashion in his 20s, butjust couldnt find the means or the confidence . What changed for you . It was partly lowering not just my expectations, but my ambitions. I i couldnt write a great tragic novel, so i finally decided i would do something that i thought i could do, which was be funny. I knew i could be funny. I have been able to do essays at university that made my lecturers laugh. But but but the snobs in the literary world have never really rated funny. No, they never really have rated funny. And they still dont rate funny. And you still get in a lot of trouble if you are funny. Nevertheless, it got me going. And before, people thought this is a comic novelist, we know what we think of him, they were surprised by my writing, because they had never seen anything like it before. So you decided to be funny. What about jewishness . Yeah, yeah. You are onto something here. Because i never thought i would write about being jewish. I am interested in being jewish. But. Ive read a bit about your background, and you say that your parents didnt go to synagogue much, they didnt expect you to be. Not at all. I had a bar mitzvah, and that was it. My father hoped that i would marry a nicejewish girl. I am married a half nice jewish girl. No, a nice, half jewish girl. You married several times. What i know aboutjewishness now, i have found out through my reading. I was in a community that did not care very much about it. There was a very nice secularity in thejewish community i grew up in in manchester, in the 50s. We were the second or third generation. We had come from central and eastern europe, and they wanted to forget where they had been. They wanted to be english. They wanted to go to English Universities and read english books. I was totally and completely english, and had his extra card to play whenever i wanted it, which was the being jewish. No more than that. But look, nobody can explorejewish consciousness without running up pretty quickly nevermind all the humour and comedy against the most tragic events of the 20th century, but you can go back thousands years. Thejewish story is a story that is woven through with suffering. But my question to you is how easy has it been for you to find the laughs, the humour, the light side, in anti semitism, in the holocaust itself, which youve also taken on, in at least one of your novels . Imean. How you do it . Its not its not difficult. It is what we do. It is the very thing we do. Some say that the best jokes in the world arejewish or aboutjews. If it is going to be aboutjews, then only thejews can really tell it well. The reason for that is precisely because we know that life is not funny. If you arejewish, your history tells you that life is not funny, and everything ends up badly. Out of that out of that grows a particular kind of morbidity, a kind of bleak inexpectancy which permeates the bestjoke. People who fall around and do banana skin jokes arent, to me, funny. And that has not been my comedy. To bejewish is to makejokes. To be a jewish writer is to need to be, in some way or another, a comic writer. But to be to what extent do you fear that you are a little exclusive in this pursuit of a very jewish consciousness . It is riven through all of your. In one of your books, kalooki nights, you describe it as the mostjewish book ever. And i remember the finkler question, and im notjewish. I enjoyed it, and it was a prize winning book, but i did think to myself, i wonder how wide the readership for this book will be. Do you ever wonder about that . Yes. When i finish the book, the normal order is my wife sees it. She says she likes it, but it mightjust be the two of us. My agent said he really liked it, but that could just be the three of us. Nobody that i showed it to thought it was going to travel. Because it was too jewish . Yes. Because the idea of a novel centred around twojewish men in london talking about being jewish, and one of them wasnt evenjewish. It did seem private, but it was not private to thejudges, and it was not private to the people who bought the book. Manyjews after reading this asked me if the non jews get this. And the answer is yes, they do get it. Unless they dont want to get it, doggedly refusing to get it. They do get it. Because being jewish being i mean, weve had enouthewish literature, and jewish history and talk of jewishness to have an idea about what it is about. Everybody is a bit ofjew, really. Jew is the outsider. The english have always been interested injewishness, the puritans were. Thejews came up with christianity, dont forget. You arejewish, so you are speaking from a jewish perspective right now. Those who are not might be thinking, to coin a clichejewish phrase, enough already. I am interested in one particular aspect which comes up in the finkler question. I will talk about the political aspect of it in a bit, and that is anti semitism. In the book ive written it down there is one character who says anti semitism was becoming again what it had always been an escalator that never stopped, in which anyone could hop on at will. That is a pretty discomfiting line of narrative. Anyone can hop on to anti semitism at will. Do you really feel that . Well, what did i mean by anyone . Well, put it this way people hop on and hop off it. Anti semitism has its moments and goes away. Its having its having a moment again in our time. I wrote a novel five years ago, a dystopian novel called j, which imagined a world withoutjews. Because i had decided with what was going on in europe, with so many attacks onjews, could it be, after such a short period after the holocaust, it could be here again . How could people allow themselves to think that so soon . Couldnt we have at least another 20 years, 70 years . The fact that it was there again without much wait made me wonder if it was eternal. Is thejew an eternal other . We know that every Society Needs an other, a scapegoat, somebody they can blame for what is going wrong. Thejews have been blamed for what has been going wrong for a couple of thousand years. You would have thought that it would have stopped. I have not had a hard time in this country. I have had a easy time in this country. Ifeel i can move freely in this country, touch wood, without personal anti semitism. But it would be madness to suppose that it is not there. And it is here in a particular guise. Well, maybe sometimes you see it in places where, actually, it is something else. And i am thinking here about the conflation, some would say, the conflation of anti semitism and anti israeli sentiment, or anti zionist sentiment. I dont conflate it. Some do. Well, there may be some who do. Some are accused of conflating it when they do not. They are two separate things, but that does not mean that they are bound to be separate things. It is quite true that an anti zionist need not be an anti semite. But that doesnt mean that an anti zionist is never going to be an anti semite. They are two distinct and different things. One is political and ideological the other is about the hate of a people and a religion. Depending on the nature of the anti zionism. It is not a fixed entity. If somebody said they wanted to see the end of the state of israel, and the end of the only country in the world that isjewish, i question how far thats only political. Because why would they say that . I question those attacks on zionism that dont know what zionism is actually is. Zionism is not an imperial force. It doesnt exist to oppress people or steal their country. It was a liberationist movement cooked up in the minds of europeans, many of them notjews, at the end of the 19th century, to find a way to liberate jews from the oppression that they were suffering all over europe, and in some places suffering themselves. If we we feel that zionism has detoured from its early ideals, that is having else. I do not want to go too far down the track analysing what zionism is. We have spoken to fascinating people on this show before, like ilan pappe, an israeli who is an anti zionist, who we have explored these ideas with. But with you, i wanted to focus on what this has meant for you in your relationship with your own if i can put it this way your own domestic british political views. What i am getting at is the degree to which you have chosen to enter this debate about whether the leadership of the labour party, Jeremy Corbyn and some of the others around him, have failed to root out what you have described as anti semitism and are thereby seen i dont know whether by you but certainly by some others who have voiced similar view to yours as fellow travellers on anti semitism. Why have you chosen to fight this battle . I would like to Say Something grand and say it chose me. I was not the first person to see that there were problems with anti semitism in the labour party. A lot of labour politicians were saying that, and a lot of jewish labour politicians. But a lot of labour mps who happen to bejewish are still full of anxiety about it to this day. We had a two individuals, ken livingstone, well known in the party, and naz shah, mp, who said things which were recanted by naz shah, not so much by ken livingstone. Not at all. But these things were put through a series of investigations, and they were suspended for a time from the party. The labour party has dealt with that. It is not dealt with it. It had the worst enquiry you could imagine. It was an inquiry that lasted about three weeks. Lots of people were invited to submit their thoughts. I submitted some thoughts. No sign at all that the lady leading the inquiry had read them, or that shed read very, very much submitted byjewish thinkers and writers and talkers. The inquiry was the inquiry found almost nothing. It was framed in the crudest possible language, saying that some things make people uncomfortable, and so we should change the words a little. The rabbi says he is talking of his group in thejewish community we dont accept that anti semitism is right on the labour party. The examples that have been repeated in the media, many have been reported inaccurately, and only a very few seem to be genuine examples of anti semitism. I just wonder why you have chosen to invest so much in this, as you would say, as a signal of something that is so very wrong. I would wonder why someonejewish would choose to say what he said. There arejews who think. I do know who he is talking about because any number ofjews feel as i know about this and encouraged them to speak out as i do. There is a great deal of anxiety. I tell you what it is. It isnt that i feel that if i walked intoJeremy Corbyn in a room, he would punch me on the nose and call me a dirty jew, but i think what he would do is look sneeringly at my concerns, he would not take my point that there is a kind of anti zionism which does morphing into anti semitism. He is an idealog. He has believed for a long time the palestinian cause is a good cause, i dont dismiss or deride the palestinian cause, but it has been simplified and sentimentalised at the expense of manyjews and settling many israelis and i think that should be certainly manyjews and settling many israelis and i think that should be taken on board and notjust sneered at and i dont have any sense at all thatJeremy Corbyn or those around him would do anything but sneer at the things im saying to you now. Well, we will interview, i hope, on this subject Jeremy Corbyn and others. One of your greatest concerns expressed in recent days has been the impact of social media platforms in particular, i think you focused on twitter on our culture, and particularly on what they are doing to our children. You have said twitter will make children illiterate within 20 years. Thats surely a polemic. You dont really believe that, do you . Well, im a polemicist. As well as being a novelist, im a polemicist. Yes, but theres a place where polemic departs from reality, and you seem to have hit it. I dont think i have departed from reality at all. In fact, ive been slightly misreported only slightly misreported there. I dont think twitter is the i mean, i wouldnt tweet. I think its a totally foolish thing to do, and im not at all surprised that president trump. Donald trump used it as a key vehicle for winning the presidency of the united states. And for making the world a more stupid place. Im not going to just back victory for the sake of victory. America is more stupid now that trump is in power than it was before and the idea that there are 50 Million People who want to know what he said that night. Well, i want to know whether we live in a safe world. But im not talking about twitter. I was actually talking about the social media, generally, and i believe that absolutely. The whole business of the internet from the mobile phone, which is im not sneering at other people the mobile phone has affected my memory, its affected my capacity for concentration and im not the only. And i hardly use it compared to some people. I sit there and i look at my phone and i wonder about my phone and i cant read pages of prose the way i used to be able to and im not doing all the other stuff. This is perfectly clear. I hate to break it to you, but maybe the Younger Generation is better at multitasking and using their brains than you are. Its a fair point, but if it were true, i would say fine. Im too old for it, my generation will pass away and how wonderful that this brand new generation who can do everything. They cant. Theyre not reading, they cant concentrate, they dont know what they dont know the nature of the discourse that theyre reading. They dont know i often see people commenting on something ive written, they dont know what it is, they dont know if its funny, they dont know if i mean it, they dont know if its ironic. Social media has. Hang on, if i may interrupt for a sec but why, when im enjoying myself well, i can tell you are. But we began with Something Interesting you saying that in the early part of your writing life, you were too snobbish and it was only when you abandoned that that you became your true self as a writer. So heres my thought about social media, whether it be facebook, twitter or whatever. You dont like it because theres still a residue of that elitism in you. But if you flip the argument around, you could say that many people who are never going to read novels or the extended journalism that you write actually do receive information in a new way through the internet, through these social media platforms and its actually spreading knowledge, spreading the ability to express a personal opinion in ways that we have never imagined before. Well, i want people now to be i want the very best that people have thought and said to be available to people. To be able to do that, you have to concentrate. The best things to have been written are difficult. Many neuroscientists writing about these problems now and there are many of them, notjust elitist writers like me, are concerned about what the whole business of the social media and the internet are doing to our memory. We cant remember things, we cant connect what we read before with what were reading now. We have you say people are getting information. Information is not the most important thing. The thing that matters to me as a writer when you are reading something is. Look, the importance of literature and, indeed, in art is its impersonality. In art, we can escape our merely mundane, political selves and we can find a self, we can be surprised into finding something else. When we read a novel, ideally, we are open. Were reading a different kind of voice, were hearing the words used differently. If the kids hear words used differently on the social media, theyll go screaming mad. Well, jonathan douglas, director of the National Literacy trust who studies these things in detail concludes, Digital Technology can play a hugely Important Role in giving children and young people a route into reading and helping develop their literacy skills. Fine, and he says it can and i say it can do the opposite. And i dont. It cant. I wouldnt i dont say that what hes saying is a lie or impossible. Im saying its having other effects too that we should care about. We should care if people dont know when theyre reading something on their phone, where its appeared, what part of the newspaper its appeared, is it an article . Sometimes they read things that have been attributed to me that they thinks an article. I havent written it. They dont know the nature of the discord. Yes, but the point about the internet, surely, and the way people use it is that it is bottom up. Its killing off the hierarchy and this would apply to the Mainstream Media people like me as much as anybody it is bottom up in a way that is challenging, yes, perhaps, potentially dangerous, but also hugely exciting and empowering. Well, if youre saying this is a wonderfully democratic movement, it is a wonderfully democratic movement. And people who were not heard before are heard now. Now, thats only a great virtue if we feel its a good idea. Its a great virtue if you believe in democracy. Seems to me youre losing faith in democracy very fast. 0h, of course im losing faith in democracy. Look what democracys done. It gave us brexit in our country, gave Us Donald Trump over there. Im not a great believer in democracy. Well, theyre answers that you happen to disagree with, but they are answers that the people came up with through the process of a democratic election. Are you saying these days you prefer putins managed democracy or chinas. No, no, no. What are you saying . No, i think democracy democracy is the best worst system that we have. It is and one cant think of anything better. But that doesnt mean that we should not be made extremely anxious by it, and any philosopher whos put his mind to democracy knows all along that theres a secret problem with democracy and thats the people. The people often get things wrong. Are you saying you dont think the people get things wrong . According to you, recently, its not so much the people, its the result. You know, you like democracy, as long as it makes the right decision. Sure i do. Do we want the wrong. . But who are you, no offence, howard jacobson, to describe to me what the right answer is . Thats no good. I dont know what the right answer is, but its up to me as a citizen that cares about the country i live in and that cares about the people in whose name we value democracy that they dont make a disastrous decision, and if people make a disastrous decision. Then in democracies, they right it. There will come a time, another election, when they will kick top quote the phrase kick the bums out. Ah, but in a referendum, you dont get another election. We are being told by people, thats it, the people have spoken and theyve spoken forever. The people have never spoken forever. It doesnt start with me, it starts with plato. People have been worrying about democracy for a long time. And a true democrat should worry about democracy. Given were almost out of time, we cannot go over the ins and outs of brexit right now. I want to stay focused upon you for my last question. I just wonder whether having lived this long life, written these many books, indulged in so much political and cultural commentary, do you believe youve acquired wisdom . Do you feel much wiser than you did as that writer setting out in his late 30s to write the great novel . I think i know a few things i didnt know before and i think i know how little i know now, and i think im wise enough to know that its terrible folly to suppose that you are wise. I am prepared to admit that most of the time i am a fool. And are you more at peace with yourself . Yes. Thats a wonderful way to end. Lets leave it right there. Howard jacobson, i really thank you for being on hardtalk. Thank you. Pleasure. Thank you very much indeed. Hello there. 0ur weather has taken on a decidedly cool and, dare i say it, quite autumnal feel. As we head on through friday, it will remain cool, after quite a chilly start, and we will see a mixture of sunshine and showers. Showers from the word go across northern england, into wales and the south west. These gradually drifting further south and east, and as the showers arrive in east anglia and south east england, they will turn very heavy indeed, with some hail and some thunder. All the while, showers keep going across Northern Ireland and a good part of scotland. So lets take a closer look, then, at ii 00pm in the afternoon. A mixture of sunny spells and hefty showers to the south west of england. 15 degrees there in plymouth. Could get to 16 in southampton, in the dry spells. But bear in mind, as the showers drift through, the temperatures will drop away by a good few degrees. Maybe just 12 or 13 degrees in some of the showers across the south east and east anglia very heavy, with hail and thunder. A mixture of sunshine and showers for northern england. Quite a few showers across north east scotland, a fair old breeze blowing here, as well. But south west scotland a better chance of seeing more in the way of dry weather, and some spells of sunshine. Sunny spells and hefty downpours for Northern Ireland, and a similar story for wales, and particularly close to the west coast it will be fairly windy. Now, as we go on through friday night, many of the showers will fade away. But some will continue, most likely across north east england, into wales, the south west, some showers continue across north east scotland, as well. Many other places will turn dry, with some clear spells. Maybe the odd mist patch, and temperatures easily down to eight, nine, or 10 degrees, but some spots in the countryside cold enough for a touch of grass frost. So we begin the weekend between this area of low pressure to the east and this area of High Pressure trying to push in from the west. It leaves us with a northerly wind never a warm wind direction. Yes, there will be some spells of sunshine, but again, some showers, some of them heavy, and those temperatures around 13 degrees for aberdeen and glasgow. 12 in belfast, maybe 15 for cardiff, and 16 for london. But as we go through saturday night, as the showers fade, we see clear skies and light winds, it is going to turn very chilly indeed. 0ur towns and cities perhaps down into single digits. But, out in the countryside, particularly out west, were looking at lows of one, two, three degrees. There could well be a touch of grass frost to start sunday morning, but sunday should see some improvements, certainly in terms of the showers. Fewer showers, more dry weather, more sunshine. 15 to 18 degrees. And that is the story for the weekend. The showers, slowly but surely, will ease. There will be some sunny spells, but the nights will be decidedly chilly. This is bbc news. Im james menendez. 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