I’ve downloaded your book, but I haven’t read it yet.
Fran Kelly, interviewing Michelle de Kretser, RN Breakfast
The Melbourne Writers Festival is on again, and so all talk has turned once again to of course the Melbourne Writers Festival. Could we eventually have the whole festival discuss nothing but the festival? What greater tribute to the great Gerald Murnane could there be than the festival spiraling into itself, mise en abyme, like two TV cameras pointed at one another until nothing remains?
Mind you, we’re almost there already. We had a first go round with this when Marieke Hardy’s program was announced, with its now notorious pet funerals, literary tattoos and primal screaming for houseplants sort of thing. Now it’s actually started, we’re going ’round again, with various literary-world figures denouncing it as “whatever it is it’s not a writers’ festival”.
By literary figures I mean of course publishers who are furious that the festival, their premier bulk marketing opportunity, has been taken away from them. The publishers may moan, but they softened up the writers festival — which buds off the original post-war Edinburgh arts festival, designed to restore cultural seriousness to a ravaged Europe — to such a degree that it was only a matter of time before someone came along and turned it into a fey version of Coachella.
The critics of the current MWF can’t deny that the program is a jump in racial/LGBTQIA+/disability diversity, following a festival that was whiter than a Dulux swatch for art gallery decoration, years beyond it being embarrassingly shameful.
Nevertheless, it points to the absurdity of writers’ festivals, at least in the middle of a place branded as a city of literature, for the one thing its defenders appear to be saying is “look, at least it’s funnn for a change”. True, the publishers’ festival model had become boring as in recent years, but surely, if you need pet funerals and massage circles to make it fun, what were you looking for in a writers festival in the first place?
If the well-curated discussion of ideas and books, readings and debates isn’t fun in itself, then what did you really like about writers’ festivals in the first place?
[Australian literary festivals and the optics of outrage]
The answer is elite self-affirmation taken to a new level. The diversity is one of identity, not of ideas. Marieke Hardy has said that she thinks the world needs more hugs than arguments, and that she would not program someone like Germaine Greer. This seems to be the exact opposite of what a public festival centred around texts should be. The idea of wounded selfhood in need of reparation runs through the festival, at least a certain amount of it apparently due to the fact that Hardy’s dog died.
The festival is thus an expression of that easiest of cures for wounded selfhood, a sheen of narcissism. The collective version of such in this case. If there’s something a little nauseating about Magda Szubanski’s living funeral or Clementine Ford DJing in a onesie, it’s due to the well-founded suspicion that the role of festival attendees is to be an admiring audience for this self-celebration.
The exclusion of real debate — such as a figure like Greer might provide — is absolutely necessary to this. Queer is the presiding spirit of the fest, and in its usual current paradoxical fashion: a dominating ideology perpetually presenting itself as an insurgent one, and relying for any intensity it might have on the latter illusion.
Any questioning of it would limit the festival’s purpose of class affirmation. The desperate desire to do anything but talk about books is an admission that cultural production is now largely about class reproduction of a new elite, and that the material itself is more pretext than, erm, text.
This reflects a movement in the wider culture. Literary fiction sales are down precipitately across the anglosphere, by as much as 30-40% over the past five-eight years. Having survived the rise of ebooks, publishers and booksellers are now looking nervously at the beginnings of what McLuhan predicted as a “post-Gutenbergian” culture — one no longer dominated by linear text within a spined codex, or “book” to you.
The dirty secret of an increasing number of readers is that for all their love of reading, they can’t wait until it’s late enough to be able to grab the remote and dive into Netflix, the state-of-the-art immersive narrative delivery system once provided by fat novels, long poems and some dude with a harp singing of ancient wars. No one really wants to admit how irrelevant literary culture is becoming to the wider culture itself, and yet how much it is being used by the knowledge-class elites who run sections of the state, to enforce its own values, through ever-expanding centres, grants, prizes. Not read, but at least downloaded, as we wander, butts tingling from getting a tattoo of the Edinburgh tattoo, between the wellness tent and the pet cemetery.
What is the purpose of writers festivals? Write to boss@crikey.com.au and let us know.
That last para is a real cracker. 🙂
Perceptive & amusing, Rundle.
Has the hunger for fiction diminished in the last decade because reality is (forgive the pun) trumping it? Can’t think of an author offhand who could’ve sketched out last week’s shenanigans in Canberra & made it believable. Truth seems more bizarre than creative imagination in these times.
How’s Crikey’s readership going? I’ve removed the auto-renewal option this year. Am I the only one? It’s because I like podcasts, not Netflix. For the price of a Crikey subscription I can get Chapo Trap House and Citations Needed and still have change for a couple of months of Netflix if I want it. I get to listen on the train on the way home and look up the references at the same time.
“No one really wants to admit how irrelevant literary culture is becoming to the wider culture itself”
I’m really not so sure. There has to be a distinction between fiction and non fiction. Authorative non fiction is, I suggest, alive and well but the readership, in percentage terms, was never large. I put this question to a rep. at Blackwell’s (Oxford) recently and the company seems to be doing well (thank you very much).
Fiction : well there is the Steven King (and similar) and the substantially superior and it would not surprise me if the former was losing to Netfix.
“and yet how much it is being used by the knowledge-class elites who run sections of the state, to enforce its own values”
Noting new here Guy (in terms of hegemony).
I’ll be impressed when Mr David Irving (or similar) is invited to an Australian Writers’ Festival as guest speaker (in the interests of free speech alone)! Until then I’ll continue to read.
Fiction : well there is the Steven King (and similar) and the substantially superior and it would not surprise me if the former was losing to Netfix.
I think you will find it is the reverse. High culture ‘serious’ literature is in more trouble than genre literature. Genre areas like crime, romance and science fiction tend to have stronger audiences both historically and in the present. That does not mean there is not pressure on all of them. However genre fiction largely has to survive on its sales, and not on a significant input of public support like high literature.
Given what you have written, Peter, I can accept that ‘high literature’ could be traded for ‘high cinema’ but (not that I’d know) there seems to be very little ‘high cinema’ on Netfix. Thus beng the case there is no obvious subsitute for those who enjoy ‘high literature’ as you put it.
Of course one can enjoy both. Alistair Cooke, writing of Bertie Russell, said that Russell could devour a crime novel in 20 minutes. The more heinous the crime the more Russell enjoyed the story. Then he would offer the novels (having purchased half a dozen or so) to fellow passengers or the train/ticket conductor.
I volunteered to film a sort of new age psychology festival in the early 90s. I’m not even sure if writers festivals existed then, we were still getting over the 80s which was getting over the 70s, less drugs and no nudity or public defecation but loads of pop guru-ism. Anyway, I was struck by the audience, all appeared to be late middle aged reasonably well off public servants. I arrived at this conclusion by noting the large number of Saabs and Volvos trundling up the driveway at Point Walter. The way you described the writers festival milieu struck a chord, more middle class self indulgence. Hardy is certainly a middle age icon; literary heritage and parents running SBS, announcer on JJJ, the poor thing was predestined to indulge herself for the benefit of a small group of non-entities enjoying vicarious sophistication. The piece about her dog is just, well, silly….pathetic really.