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September 5, 2004
ARTICLE: The magic goes on
THIS year the festival is celebrating 21 years of its existence. There was no blueprint in 1983 for such a book festival and as the founder, Jenny Brown, recalls, “Those were pioneer days. It was a one off celebration of books. Nobody thought it could be sustained.” But from such modest beginnings, it has grown to be the biggest book festival in the world, with over 200,000 people listening to 550 authors at 650 events. And it’s competing for custom with four other cohabiting festivals in August in Scotland’s capital city.
So what’s the secret? “Well,” friend Richard maintains, “it’s the spiritual affinity thing. Punters are hoping to be in spiritual communion with their favourite authors.” Looking at the queue for Louis de Bernieres, you could see what Richard means. The anticipation was palpable as people lined up excitedly outside the largest venue. And the author did not let them down as he talked about his latest novel Birds Without Wings, his first since the phenomenally successful Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.
The big occasion of the festival was Harry Potter’s creator J.K. Rowlings’ appearance. You can imagine the scramble for tickets. Nine thousand people applied and a ballot reduced this to 600 and then there was consternation as some of the lucky 600 were caught selling them on the Internet for hugely inflated prices. Rowlings is an Edinburgh resident. She wrote the first Potter book there. Another Edinburgh personality, in fact Scotland’s grand dame of literature, graced the festival for the first time. Muriel Spark (of Miss Brodie fame) at 86 gave a gorgeously measured performance, one to thrill any groupie’s heart and was then given a special book festival award.
Contentious matters are not really included in the festival although George Galloway, the outspoken labour MP was there saying the Americans should stay in Iraq and get a ‘Bloody good hiding, just as they did in Vietnam.’ Stella Rimington, erstwhile head of MI6, spoke out against the war too while promoting her recent foray into novel writing. Jeremy Bowen sparked an ineffectual debate on the Middle East — “Well, I didn’t learn very much from that,” said my companion, “but it was lovely to actually see Jeremy in person.” Thus confirming the spiritual affinity theory.
The book festival is brilliantly produced with over 30 events a day spread over two and a half weeks. Each day is run on Rolls Royce lines, so much so, that the whole thing can be somewhat sanitized and a bit too good to be true. Now and again a real personality erupts and dominates the stage. Such a one was David Crystal who introduced Mark Abley. He had travelled the world seeking out dying languages for his recent book. But Crystal was so keen on the topic that he hogged the limelight with plenty of provocative assertions. Especially when he maintained that a language died every two years and that endangered ones should have the same attention as dying animal and plant species. Well, some in the audience were not best pleased with that.
Coming of age, the festival was bound to attract imitators so it was no surprise to see posters for a three-day fringe event. ‘The more the merrier,’ Catherine Lockerbie, the main festival’s successful organizer, was heard to say when she was told about the new start up. The fringe event was more raw and direct, very much smaller and edgier than the main one. It was organized by the poet Tessa Ransford, who told me she had lived in Pakistan in the sixties. She is convinced that art, culture and creativity are at the very essence of all of us and that this life force is not adequately reflected by the state of culture in Scotland today.
The opening breakfast meeting heard impassioned pleas that culture should come from the people, rather than be imposed from the top by governments in an elitist manner. Global capitalism is producing culture as a consumer good in the same way as it produces processed food in supermarkets.
Felicity Lawrence, back in the main festival, gave a vivid talk about the inequities of supermarkets, which she found out while researching for her recent book, Not on the Label. She told us how everything is sacrificed to appearance, so that the nutritional value of food is being compromised. She was critical too of the toll being taken in Third World countries by their pandering to the requirements of western supermarkets.
This was reinforced by two authors whose topics were honey and caviar — both foods under pressure from poor nurturing and criminal activities, which threaten the purity of both products. Travel is another consumer good derived from global capitalism and Taras Grascoe has written a book about his travels round the world observing the impact which mass tourism has on Third World countries.
But novels are the main staple of the festival and there was no shortage of novelists on display. Andrea Levy spoke eloquently about her books, which reveal the Jamaican immigrants’ experience of life in Britain. She was asked what her mother thought of her books. “She wishes I’d shut up,” she replied. She was beautifully sanguine about not reading a novel until she was 23, not publishing one until she was 35 and getting only one ‘A’ level and that at E grade. “How then,” asks one, “did you get on the jury of the Orange Book Award?” She smiled sweetly.
Nadeem Aslam writes about first and second generation Pakistanis in an undisclosed English town. And Hari Kunzuri does likewise. He’s hooked on borders and what they do to people. He said that since 9/11 he is trying to eradicate any optimism from his thoughts and rather poignantly said, “America doesn’t feel like the future any more.” I liked that and felt a sudden surge of spiritual affinity. Edinburgh’s 2004 book festival had worked its magic once again.
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