The Tasmanian Richard Flanagan is a highly regarded writer. In 2014, he took out the Man Booker, arguably the anglosphere’s most exalted literary prize. He’s collected plenty of other gongs for pretty fiction and so we must be confident that the bloke knows his way around a keyboard. That he has a clear memory of the national cultural past, though, now seems in doubt. We’ll get to that.
First, The Australian joyously reported the decision of the Brisbane Writers’ Festival to “disinvite” participants Bob Carr and Germaine Greer. This must have been as cultural Cialis to our friends who love little more than to decry the intellectual stasis and censorship of the “Left”. It was only irritating to me, because the report contained no reason for the expulsion of Bob Carr. Greer, we know, is regularly “no platformed” and perhaps this Milo-style anti-marketing works quite well for her. But, Carr? I’ve flicked through his new book and found no offence equal to eviction — if you’ve heard he’s got all Malthusian on the matter of population control, he hasn’t. We can only suppose it’s his tolerance of China or intolerance of Israel that has ticked off some sponsor. Goodness, I’d love to know.
What I’d love more, though, is a good response from a true “Left”, rather than the fake one The Australian regularly creates. And which the “Left” manages to simulate quite well. Anyhow, Flanagan gave it a go, and could, unfortunately, come up with nothing more than Free Speech Is Essential and We Are Frightened of New Ideas.
So, Flanagan wrote a bit in The Graun about the dumbing down etc. of Australian writers events. Per Flanagan, these once celebrated difference, challenged authority and sharpened Kafka’s axe. The latter a tool with which I, not a reader of novels, would have remained unfamiliar were it not for Google. Apparently, it inflicts the pain by which one recognises literary greatness.
I have certainly experienced the agony of boredom at our nation’s finest writers’ festivals, but never the wounds of knowledge Flanagan says were once regularly sustained. Perhaps I went to the wrong sessions, or perhaps Flanagan, a person around my age, was not so liquored up as me in the ’90s, the decade in which our festivals of foreseeable ideas became established. Or, perhaps literature’s great prizes afflict their recipient’s memory. Wouldn’t know. Never won one and never shall, but many of those gifted souls who have tend to come over all Things Were Better In My Day.
I lived through the decade in which Flanagan’s gifts were first recognised by cultural organisations and even appeared at some events. As I recall, these were largely peopled by authors, like myself, of marketable ephemera, virtual reality enthusiasts and novelists who had written in some detail about their heroin-induced constipation. There were, of course, always unambiguously Literary people, such as Flanagan would become. But I genuinely can’t remember any sort of Contest of Ideas.
Still, Flanagan reckons he can and so writes of an Australian intellectual past that I perceive as fiction. Maybe he’s right and maybe I was drunk and am wrong to remember that time as one in which the shitty thinking of the Third Way was intellectually dominant. Whatever the case, Flanagan does not make a good case for the future of “debate” in elevating organised debate itself to such prominence.
In debating about the conventions of formal debate, Flanagan invokes the authority he claims must be felled with Kafka’s axe. I mean to say. From a form of middle-brow entertainment that came of age in this nation precisely in the moment that John Howard began his “culture wars”, what does he expect? Any real discomfort at our “ideas” festivals these past thirty years was permitted only by accident or the stubbornness of the very few directors genuinely committed to those persons unlikely to identify as members of a “bohemian” group.
Very few of our literary festivals or “intellectual” events have a function that is not illusory. Save for those, such as the National Young Writers’ Festival, which do not simply presume literacy of participants but aim to promote it, they serve to remind the knowledge worker and snob that they’re special. They do not seek new ideas but merely reconstitute them to appear as such. I would not say that there is anything particularly novel about the “Antidote” festival at the Sydney Opera House, save for its open arrogance that we have diagnosed all the problems in the world and can just fix them if we all get together in some sort of hackathon event facilitated by the innovative Todd Sampson.
Flanagan’s article brings to mind many thousands of articles I have read in recent years which all hold that if only such-and-such a person had a voice on TV/on the front pages of newspapers/in parliament, things would be better. This pure idealism of his is as intrinsically resistant to the “free speech” as he believes the Brisbane Writer’s Festival to be.
Flanagan expresses surprise in his article that “debate” should be subject to material conditions. “Does this mean money chooses which writers you hear — and don’t hear — at the BWF?” Dude.
Flanagan believes that the idea was, at one point, pure. The idea is always produced and reproduced by persons, and it doesn’t come first unless you’re an ancient Greek.
Or, perhaps, a person who believes in the ability of “debate” to transform the world. Money will do a quicker, more destructive job every time.
Ah Helen, on the few occasions I understand what you’re writing, you rain on my parade. I really like Richard. But you’re right, the good old days are actually the bad old days.
“The latter a tool with which I, not a reader of novels, would have remained unfamiliar were it not for Google” says it all. Razer commenting on an art form she doesn’t actually consume. It’s good to see intellectual wankery is alive and well. I just wish it wasn’t supported by Crikey.
Between us, I was fibbing! They made me read Kafka at school!
Either way, this is not a review of Flanagan the novelist but a comment on the trust many place in writers’ festivals and similar intellectual events. I have attended many such gathering and am qualified to speak on their cultural importance.
But. It is totally okay not to like this piece. Just dislike it for valid reasons xx
MzRaz appears not to have read Flanagan’s graun piece with anything approaching due attention.
His point was not the preening of local wankfests but a far more serious point about the closing of what passes for the bien pissant mind all over the western world.
As for “We can only suppose it’s his tolerance of China or intolerance of Israel that has ticked off some sponsor. Goodness, I’d love to know.” may I suggest that the “Recently appointed BWF acting chief executive” Ann McLean’s “moment of clarifying folly, says that Bob Carr’s invitation was being withdrawn in “consideration for the brand alignment of several sponsors we are securing for the festival”. Seems pretty clear to me.
Not sure that I would call “The Unkown Terrorist” a “pretty fiction” and no-one not totally liquored up would describe “The Narrow Road to the Deep North” as such.
Stick to your cobblers’ last, irascible ratbaggery, MzRaz, you are sadly underequipped to critique a real writer.
The style appropriate to reviewing a review or an event ought to be sequential and hence specific in the form of the reporting of a legal case (for example). A style seeking to be conversational or flipant tends to serve little purpose unless one is writing for an audience that actually attended the event; otherwise there exists an element of risk if not peril by endeavouring to reproduce the events.
To be fair, AR, Helen may (or may not) have been aware of reasons for “dis-inviting” two persons (she clams not) but the observation that The Australian did not have the thougherness to identify the reason(s) is a reasonable statement in the circumstances.
But observations such as “Flanagan believes that the idea was, at one point, pure” require some examination. By pure does he mean original or unique or appropriate for the summum bonum (because, goodness, I’d love to know). The novel “The Narrow Road to the Deep North” possesses some interesting insights but the plot is hardly original; Thackeray and a good many in the 19th and 20th century explored such themes. A tongue-in-cheek version could be “The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perin”
The Greer/Carr “reversals” are a function of what your mate Peterson has been going on about for some time; viz., the sanitising of social and political events in accordance with the changes of PC dictated by the black arm band duey-eyed post-truth “my feelings are everything” congregation. Are you suggesting that Flanagan has only ‘just snaped out of it’ and that the BWF was the best place to ‘snap out of it’ – hand hence the motivation for his article to The Guardian?
Indeed Flanagan wallows in apology prior to making some lucid points in the article that he writes for The (rather limp pro Obama/Hillary) Guardian. The major point seems to be the degree of “post-truth” (or bullshit of one prefers) that was printed in various forums in regard to the initial speech at the festival, but, as AR infers, by no means confined to the BWF. [In this regard Trump is turning the tables.] Nevertheless, that event in itself sums up the BWF.
Too many notes and not in the Mozart way. More in the way of Yes and the dreaded triple album.
I can tell that the above is some sort of critique but really at the end of it I have no idea what it was about. Not for the first time either!