The Rise And Rise Of The Literary Festival

Michael Sexton SC is the New South Wales Solicitor-General, appointed in 1998. Apart from his accomplished career at the bar, Michael Sexton is also co-author of the leading Australian text on defamation law, and the author of several books on Australian politics and history. In fact he is known as a prolific writer of political biography. Michael Sexton’s involvement ith the Sydney Writers’ Festival has included membership of the Board. On Wednesday 24 July, Michael Sexton joined Alice Grundy to address The Sydney Institute in a discussion on literary festivals.

THE RISE AND RISE OF THE LITERARY FESTIVAL

                                                                   MICHAEL SEXTON

I suppose the first question that has to be asked is why have literary festivals at all.  Reading is in many ways like writing – an essentially solitary activity.  It is not, of course, as hard work as writing!  And there are no doubt many readers who do not feel the need to share their delight in books with anybody else.

But over the last few decades it has become obvious that there are many readers who see a social aspect to the world of books.  This has been reflected in the rise of the book club and in the growth of literary festivals which have become established in most of the States and Territories in Australia. Some have also become big events in England, although they do not seem to be as common in Europe and in the United States, perhaps reflecting an element of Australian culture that remains a product of English origins. Even in England, however, the idea of the literary festival is a relatively recent one in historical terms. The oldest is the Cheltenham Literary Festival which started in 1949. The other well-known festival – the Hay Festival of Literature and the Arts – was established in 1988. It is interesting that for many centuries neither readers nor writers saw a need for this kind of event. The Sydney Writers’ Festival, for example, started in the 1990s – its exact origins are a matter of some dispute – although Adelaide certainly had an arts festival – which incorporates a writers’ week – at a much earlier time, starting in 1960.

The Adelaide Festival resulted in some celebrated literary romances over the years, some of which lasted and some of which did not.  One that did was that of novelist, Rose Tremain, and literary biographer, Richard Holmes. Two that did not were that of poet Ted Hughes, and the festival’s media person Jill Barber, and Robyn Davidson’s self-described “volcanic” three year relationship with Salman Rushdie.

Needless to say, most writers seem to enjoy talking about their books with other writers and with members of the audience at festival sessions. It has always seemed doubtful to me that festivals produced a great deal in the way of book sales for most writers. Some overseas writers doubtless enjoy the experience of travel to Australia where the airfares and accommodation are picked up by the relevant festival. In addition, at the Sydney Writers Festival all writers received a daily fee. I used to argue at board meetings that this was not necessary for locally-based writers and that almost all of these would almost happily appear to talk about their books but, as in some other matters, I never had any success in getting a majority of the board to agree.

On the general question of how festivals should be funded, the Sydney Writers Festival in my time had a mixture of public funding, corporate sponsorship and private donations. On the public side, the NSW government and the City of Sydney each put in, as I recall, $250,000 a year. One of the conditions of this funding was that at least half the events would be free (as opposed to, for example, Melbourne where all the events carry a charge). Another condition was that some of the events be held in parts of Western Sydney away from the central locations of the wharfs in Hickson Road and the Opera House.

Any public funding carries, of course, some responsibilities. But it must be said that, in the case of the Sydney Writers Festival, the expenditure by the NSW government and the City of Sydney was not large in comparison with public expenditures on many other cultural and sporting exercises. It would hardly compare, for example, to government donations to the Australian Opera (to which I am a subscriber and therefore a beneficiary). Or the government expenditures on sporting projects like the current construction of a new grandstand at the SCG (where I am a member and therefore also a beneficiary).

One of the problems with corporate sponsorship and private donations is the effect that these sources of revenue can have on the composition of the governing body.  There has been a noticeable trend in appointments to the boards of cultural bodies in Australia towards corporate managers, particularly from the financial sector, and wealthy individuals. This has been influenced at least in part by the expectation that this kind of board member will provide access to sponsorship and private funding.  So it probably does, but it has resulted in the board cultural bodies being very similar in composition to boards generally in the private and the public sector. It has always seemed to me that it would be a good idea to have some writers on the boards of literary festivals, although it may be that many writers do not want to be distracted from their work by meetings and functions. There were some writers on the board of the Sydney Writers’ Festival during my time but writing was usually not their chief professional activity.

There is, however, a real question, in my view, about the optimum size for a festival.  The Sydney Writers’ Festival grew sharply over the period that I was on the board – 2001-2011 – and this gives rise to questions of style as well as of finances.  I am not suggesting that festivals should be so small that large potential audiences are in effect locked out by the number of events being limited. But the size of individual events to some extent determines the extent of audience participation and the sheer size of a program can be a factor in diluting the quality of the events.

One phenomenon that has not been created by literary festivals – but has certainly been fostered by them – is that of the writer as celebrity. As someone who has been a lifelong reader and a sometime writer, I do not find this a particularly attractive development. But, obviously, festivals want to get the biggest names to boost audiences – which usually means overseas writers – and there is no turning back the clock on this issue. This has cost implications for festivals when they compete with each other for a particular celebrity author by offering first class airfares, lavish accommodation and opulent hospitality. Even so, the long flights to Australia from England or the United States have always meant that some writers are not to be tempted, whatever the largesse offered to them.

It is true, however, that festivals also provide some exposure for the writers of new fiction and poetry – two areas that have traditionally found it difficult to obtain reviews in the literary pages. There is, of course, a more general problem about book reviews in Australia where there is simply not enough space for even the smallest fraction of newly published works to be reviewed.  If one takes Sydney, for example, there are the literary pages of The Australian and Sydney Morning Herald together with some brief reviews in the Sun Herald. There are of course some small literary magazines but it is the absence of widely-read periodicals in Australia that sharply confines the readership of book reviews in comparison with, for example, England and the United States. The Spectator usually has one book review each week in its Australian section but it is largely an English publication and it is an extraordinary fact that there is no weekly periodical in Australia at this time. This is certainly one sense in which the quality of public discussion has declined over the last couple of decades in this country and shows no signs of reviving.

On the issue of program content, Gerard Henderson has pointed out that there is not a great deal of diversity in the social and political views of the writers and media commentators appearing at recent Sydney Writers’ Festivals. This is largely true as it is for the Melbourne Festival. I have not examined the programs for other festivals around the country but I imagine that a similar criticism could be made in most cases. In explaining this phenomenon – as opposed to defending it – it needs to be remembered that institutions are a product of their societies and literary festivals in Australia are a product of a part of Australian society – publishers, writers, bureaucrats and the media – that largely shares a common view on most social and political questions. There are quite a number of persons in all of those groups who holds sharply different views but they represent a minority position.

There is not much doubt about the fact of this consensus but the reasons for it are more difficult to divine. When I was at university in the late 1960s – seemingly some time ago but not long by historical standards – most corporate managers, senior bureaucrats and lawyers together with a good proportion of academics and journalists were sympathetic to America’s role in the world; to the actions of the police and other law enforcement bodies in dealing with the crime; to policies designed to secure the country’s borders; and to some limits on government regulation. Those groups now largely hold almost exactly the opposite opinions.

This was a development identified by Nick Cater in his book The Lucky Culture published earlier this year but I am not sure that the book provides an explanation of how this happened and I was not planning to try and do that this evening.  But this turnaround does help to explain the programs at literary festivals. This is because, as I have already suggested, literary festivals are organised by a relatively small segment of our society. The views that I have referred to earlier are not widely held in the general community but they are largely held by those groups who occupy Australia’s cultural worlds, one of which, using the word in its broadest sense, is the media.

Having said all that, it has always seemed to me that even these groups would have more fun at festivals and other events if there were sometimes an actual debate on social and political questions, that is, some robust disagreement between the presenters with the audience able to ultimately join in and express their opinions.  This was something else I raised from time to time at board meetings of the Sydney Writers’ Festival but it seldom happened when the program came out.  This is not, of course, just a problem for literary festivals.  If it ever did, Australia certainly does not now have the tradition of vigorous public debate that has always existed in the United States. There are plenty of criticisms that can be made of the American political system but there is a much wider range of ideas open for discussion than in the relatively narrow spectrum of Australian politics. And the same can be said about a wide variety of social and economic issues about which it is difficult to spark any debate in Australia.

To give one example – over the last year or so there has been some criticism of legislation at the federal and state level in this country that makes expressions of opinion offensive to individuals unlawful. The criticism is that this is a serious limitation on freedom of speech. I have written two or three newspaper articles putting forward this view and various other commentators have made the same argument in the media and at conferences. There has, however, never been any response to these arguments. This is not because there is no one who holds the contrary view. The fact that this kind of legislation exists at the federal and state level indicates that there were powerful groups who persuaded governments to enact those statutes. But those groups obviously feel no need to defend their position or any desire to engage with their opponents in public debate.  It is hard to imagine this kind of silence in the United States – or even in England – from one side in a contest about freedom of speech.

It might be said, of course, by those organising literary festivals that most of their audiences do not want to be challenged in their views. And there is some truth in that. My observations of audiences over ten years at the Sydney Writers’ Festival suggested that most of them shared the social and political views of the presenters and were not particularly interested in hearing a contrary opinion. That is, however, no reason why audiences should not sometimes be confronted with contrary opinions. As I have already suggested, quite apart from the value of public debate, it is simply more fun in my experience to get an argument going both on the stage and in the audience. But, as I say, this is not now, if it ever was, part of the Australian tradition.

Having said all that, there is little doubt that in Australia the literary festival is an established and expanding notion. It seems unlikely to me that this trend will change in the immediate future, notwithstanding the enormous volume of electronic communications that are encountered everyday by most people in our society and which may ultimately affect the way in which many books themselves are read. As I mentioned at the start, there is a social aspect to the literary festival above and beyond the once solitary experience of reading. There will, however, hopefully always be some readers who, like Robert Louis Stevenson – a great storyteller himself – think one of life’s greatest pleasures is “a long, silent, solitary lamp lit evening by the fire” with the novels of Alexandre Dumas.