I noticed some of the Hay Festival coverage in the Guardian and was interested to see that it seemed as though quite a few politicians were quoted from there – I guess they must have been promoting books but that was certainly less important in the media coverage of what they had to say. I’ve only been once but did get to hear John Pilger speak, which was brilliant. It was good to meet the man behind the book but I totally agree that sometimes it seems as though this is more important than the book itself.

I don’t think that festivals and book events need to be like this though. The Manchester Literature Festival is excellent for events where, even if the author is there, the kinds of questions asked concern the text itself, or themes in their writing, or the act of composition. Hay is more of a celebrity styled event I think; perhaps more interesting things are going on in smaller, less famous events.

Sharon

You know, I once read an Arts Council Report from 1966 that insisted that orchestras were a PUBLIC SERVICE and, on those grounds, should be funded. Oh, how the language of such discourse has changed!

Also, I think the London Philharmonic have a wonderful public engagement strategy. Actually, I think their whole strategy probably has some rather gaping holes in it, but one aspect is great! If you work in an office, you can actually book a quartet or something to come and play for your workers at lunch time! Great! If I owned a company, I’d definitely do that once in a while!!!

Thanks for this. I hope I haven’t come across as being *too* elitist – I was actually trying to kind of make the opposite point, because I don’t believe that some of these ‘deeper’ issues you speak of *are* incommunicable, and I think the decision not to try (not that I’m suggesting there’s been a conscious decision) is unfortunate.

I suppose what I’m really commenting on is the encroachment of celebrity gloss onto literary culture. I’m not saying this is a bad thing – on the contrary, it’s been an important part of how books work since at least the nineteenth century – but the negatively-conceived Guardian-reader (or Tate Modern visitor) is ammunition for people who want to argue that literary (or artistic) culture is pretentious, irrelevant, self-congratulating, useless, or whatever else.

However unfair these stereotypes may or may not be (I saw several very unfortunate examples during my time at Hay), they have real consequences when people think about things like funding orchestras and theatres. That’s what I mean when I say ‘public engagement’, really – I think that for all its increasing breadth Hay is still missing an opportunity to reach out and show people that reading books can be about more than having the customised deckchair.

And like you, I’m far from advanced in my views – this was really only a Hay afterthought, and I’m happy to be dissuaded…

The majority of students criticised her for this ‘target’ approach and this pandering to the ignorant but if these ‘targets’ weren’t there and things were presented as the unintelligible mass of unsorted information they actually are, there would be no – or little guided – reflexivity for the gallery and scum like me wouldn’t be very welcome in the first place!

Could it be something similar to that pattern of behaviour happening at the event you described? If it gives some people an ‘in’, then perhaps it’s worth sacrificing some of the deeper public engagement… I don’t actually agree completely with what I’ve just said… but I’m just thinking aloud (well, on paper [well, on screen])!

PS. Actually, I recently found an advert which was a fabulous drawing of a box of Beecham’s tablets as some kind of crazy space-Zeppelin, flying up to heal the grateful man in the moon. This aligns pretty much perfectly with everything I want to talk about…