Beyond Good and Evil

Later on as I was sitting in the canteen with Speedy having a greasy cup of tea I got out the book that I was carrying in my dustjacket pocket to try and take my mind off my sprained wrist which was still throbbing quite badly. It was the Penguin edition of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil. The cover showed a reproduction of a painting by Franz von Stuck of The Sphinx. The Sphinx was shown in ghastly shades of yellow and green as a bare-breasted woman with her arms stretched out in front of her in a somewhat predatory pose. The combination of title and cover illustration was obviously working to good effect on Speedy’s imagination. He nodded at the book and said ‘Cor, that looks like a good read!’ I could only agree. I thought he might ask to borrow it. And why not? If a black cab driver could go on to win Mastermind, I don’t see why a bus driver couldn’t become an expert in German nineteenth century thought. I explained that the cover was a bit misleading and gave him a thumbnail sketch of what the book was about. Speedy listened politely but the look on his face was one of scarcely concealed disappointment. Perhaps he was a Hegelian?

From Setright Conundrums, Me Neither

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Eamonn Vincent's books published by Arbuthnot Books

When I published my memoir ' Me Neither ' in 2018 I started a blog in the hope of drawing attention to it. Ha! As if. Even then no one wanted yet another blog or website or tweets about your latest book. The focus had already moved on to Instagram and Pinterest, both studiously averse to textual matter. Now even those sites are old hat and all the action has moved to TikTok and, for the purposes of promoting books, to its offshoot BookTok. Stranger things have been known to happen, but somehow I doubt that Gen Z influencers are on the whole enthusing about Boomer memoirs devoted to the world of work in the 1970s and 1980s. After a few posts I abandoned the blog and let my little book make its own way through the world. In the absence of any publicity or reviews in the public prints, sales were distinctly modest. I was not surprised, but it was hard not to feel a little disheartened. Perhaps memoir was not my forte. What about writing a novel instead? Four years later I seem ...

Event/Horizon

Event/Horizon is a postwar coming-of-age story, in a broadly comic mode, but touching on darker aspects of the period, as well as on love, loss, and the pains of growing up. Set in Cambridge in 1974, it interweaves aperçus of academic life with those of the local poetry scene, theatre life, and the era’s counter-culture, — rock music, drugs, and casual sex — with all of which its hero, would-be poet Steve Percival, finds himself having to grapple, in his quest for love, enlightenment and artistic fulfilment. Apart from Event/Horizon Eamonn Vincent has published a memoir of the 1970s and 1980s Me Neither , two volumes of poetry Only More So and Even More So and more recently Who Was Nightshade? , a comic spy thriller set in the 1960s. All titles are available from Arbuthnot Books. Buy Event/Horizon on Amazon.

1974 Cambridge Folk Festival

This meant that each morning I drove by Cherry Hinton Hall. Since 1963 this had been the site of the Cambridge Folk Festival. The Hall was not actually part of my round but I was aware from the many posters that the festival would be taking place during my Cherry Hinton tour of duty. The line-up was right up my street—Arlo Guthrie, Loudon Wainwright III and Alan Stivell. I was starting to work out ways that I could do my round and still attend the festival. In the end common sense or apathy won out and I had to resign myself once again to observing gilded youth frolicking in a sylvan setting while I got my finances in order. At least I got to sleep in a comfortable bed. From Electricar Manoeuvres, Me Neither Amazon paperback. Kindle edition here .

Eamonn Vincent

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