Modern Mystery

There's been lots of publicity recently about the forthcoming Sydney Writers' Festival, (it begins in May). As always, when confronted with information about a writers' festival, I am left baffled. What is the atttraction of these things? They seem to be immensely popular and yet surely, of all the arts, writing is the one that a festival least suits.

After all, writers write books and the contents of the books are supposed to communicate what the writer wants to communicate. What on earth is the point of going and sitting meekly in a lecture hall while a writer blathers about their writing, when the writing itself is right there on the shelf, contained in a handy paper package that can be opened and shut at will? All you have to do is take the thing down and read it, without ever leaving home (even to buy it, if you use Abebooks or Amazon).

If a writer is any good at all at writing, his writing will express whatever it is he wants to express. What is to be gained from going and listening to him? Is he actually a writer or just an idle chatterer, eager for adulation? Has anything ever been said in one of these forums that was more profound than what is contained in the books of the various participants encouraged to expose themselves to the public gaze?

Of course, I'm not against festivals per se - I just think they are not a useful medium for writers. What I would like to see instead are festivals of visual artists, events where the kinds of people who exhibit at the Frieze Art Fair, (for example), are paraded before us and forced to explain themselves. I should add that, if I were running things, I would stipulate that, in their efforts to tell us what they may be attempting to do, the 'artists' would not be allowed to use any vague jargon about postmodernism et cetera, they would not be allowed to say that their work 'privileges' anything, they would not be allowed to talk about their 'practice' and they would never be allowed to mention Walter Benjamin, particularly his essay titled, 'The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction.'

Actually, I think there might be quite a good television series one could fashion from getting 'contemporary art practitioners' to explain their work to the public, while sitting on a ducking stool that threw them into deep water whenever they transgressed by doing any of the above. And, to persuade them to participate, all that would be necessary would be to tie the distribution of arts' grants to their attendance at such events. I think quite a few people might watch such spectacles with some interest. In fact, I think I should go and patent the idea before Peter Bazalgette pinches it, now that his Big Brother franchise has begun staggering towards its final gasp.