Count first among this species the reader. A serious or casual reader, but a reader, nonetheless. These readers buy books at the festival shop. They get them signed by their authors. Earnest and eager, they are keen to drink at the fountain of literary wisdom and insight. Some take notes during sessions. Or record them on their phones. Among them are armies of students, who still have not been corrupted by the global capitalist industrial complex. Several of them entertain dreams of becoming writers themselves.
Then there are the lit fest lounge lizards. The Collins Dictionary defines a ‘lounge lizard’ as ‘an idle frequenter of places where rich or prominent people gather’. Their fellow lounge lizards are usually rich. Writers, if not rich, are at least prominent people, intellectuals. Therefore, the combination — and the allure of lit fests — for the lounge lizard is nonpareil.
Members of this sub-species attend lit fests in vast numbers. They spend their own money on transport, book themselves into hotels, pay for their own food and drink. Not for them the magic touch of the delegate’s badge. They also ask memorable questions during the Q/A segment at the end of sessions. One of them once asked British writer, Hanif Kureishi, apropos of nothing his view on circumcision. Kureishi‘s response? ‘Blimey, what a country!’
For these people, lit fests are places to be seen in winter. A picnic with a self-declared, intellectual sheen. The fact that they read only WhatsApp messages is not a deterrent. In a way, it is some sort of confederacy of philistines. Yet, they pack out a VS Naipaul session. Or a lecture by Andrew O’Hagan. I doubt they visit the festival bookstore. Had they done so, literary books – fiction or non-fiction – would have become bestsellers, even by modest Indian standards, simply on the festival circuit.
Finally, there are the writers, billed as the real stars of lit fests. Why do writers attend lit fests? To feel pampered, to be wined and dined, to enjoy a sense of importance that people have turned out in numbers to hear what they have to say, to gain a sense of validation for all those weeks and months and years of lonely labour, the hardship of which few realise.
‘Writing for me is the hardest thing in the world,’ William Styron said. It is also a solitary vocation, sitting at a desk and magicking something out of nothing. It could be a book (the hardest thing of all), an essay, a column, a piece of reportage. It is exhilarating for them to meet fellow writers, exchange ideas, talk about books (not necessarily their own), and feel part of a community. In her essay, ‘The Writer as Reader’, Susan Sontag expressed this with great acuity. ‘A writer is first of all a reader… It is from reading, even before writing, that I became part of a community – the community of literature – which includes more dead than living writers.’ One does not get to meet great dead writers at festivals. No matter. The living ones will more than do. For the writer, this is a lit fest’s greatest gift.
Once the season is over, readers, non-readers, and writers retreat to where they came from. Readers return to reading, pondering over the value of what a certain writer said. Non-readers go back to their Excel spreadsheets, obfuscatory corporate jargon, and WhatsApp messages. Writers sit at their computers and bleed. (Cf: Ernest Hemingway: ‘There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.’)
For those few weeks of the lit fest season, however, a splendid time is guaranteed for all. Everyone, in their own way, is happy with their lit fest experience. Everyone is filled with good cheer. And in a world in permacrisis, who can frown upon a little sliver of all-round happiness?
The writer is author of If I Could Tell You
