I started reading John Berger in my teens in the much missed (by me) “New Society”. Over the years I read his books and article with a mixture of interest and ambivalence. In the last ten years or so my attitude has shifted and my feelings moved to a strong sense that he is a good man, who is worth listening to carefully. If you want to know what I mean buy a copy of his latest collection of thoughts and observations, “Hold Everything Dear”. His fundamental decency and humanity come shining through. But first a quote from one of his rare interviews:
“‘What seems to have been abandoned of late,’ he tells me at one point, sounding, for the first time, regretful, ‘and what is absolutely fundamental to all we have talked about, is the notion of solidarity. And it is not only to gain something that we should seek solidarity, because solidarity, in itself, is a meaningful quality, that is to say, a quality that gives meaning to life, which makes sense of life. So, I hope it’s there in my work.'”
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I saw Berger speak last night in London – a rare event, and quite strange because for so many people in the audience he clearly meant so much. In such situations, the asymmetry between reader and author reminds me of the awkwardness of a teenage crush…
For me, his work has had a powerful influence on the direction of my life. The friend who came with me last night had never read any of his books. But we both came away with the same sense that you describe – of having been in the presence of a good man.
Also, perhaps connected, he has an astonishing vigour for an eighty year old – to look at, he could be twenty years younger, and even then his energy would be remarkable.