Literary festivals and book clubs have got little to do with reading
Last summer, I was invited to the 40th anniversary of the Edinburgh Book Festival. When I got there, my kind hosts told me I had attended the very first – making an appearance on stage with Martin Amis and John Updike, both now dead, alas. I remember thinking, 40 years ago, how weird it was asking writers to sing for their suppers. Writing is an essentially solitary activity, and it is not realistic to expect that a writer – almost by definition an introvert – will be able to perform well on stage in front of an audience. Tolstoy never made a speech in his life. Since then, literary festivals have mushroomed. There is scarcely a hamlet in the land that does not have one: and they clearly make money for the organisers, if not for the authors. (One seldom gets paid for performing.) The format is nearly always the...
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