Sulla rivista britannica TheCritic trova spazio una – appunto – critica dello scrittore e giornalista Alexander Larman al fenomeno dei festival letterari, descritti enfaticamente come “l’inferno in una tenda”.

The author finds themselves driving or training across the country to some indeterminate location, where they are greeted not with warmth but with the sullen words “It’s going to be a rather quiet event, unfortunately.” The only people in the audience are angry locals for whom you are vying with Countryfile and niche internet pornography for attention. 

Someone thinks that he (it is always a he) knows more about the subject than you. There is an argument during the time allocated for questions. No copies of your book are sold. It rains. You are never invited back again.

Gli ultimi decenni hanno visto una rapida crescita nel numero di festival letterari in Gran Bretagna, a partire dalla fondazione del “Hay on Wye” nel 1988, oggi uno dei più famosi e attesi e descritto come “La Woodstock della mente”. Il fenomeno ha spinto gli autori a dover coltivare un nuovo aspetto della propria professione: quello dell’intrattenitore.

I have been to literary festivals where authors are so terrifyingly charismatic and funny that they have seduced an audience within moments. Conversely, I have seen some of our best-known and most interesting writers appear at events where they have been monosyllabic, disengaged and perfunctory.

[…]

While there are undeniable links between writing and performance, there is no criterion for being a good writer that also means that you will be adept at entertaining an audience with the pizzazz and charisma of a stand-up comedian, even as you bring erudition, literary talent and authority to bear. Some manage to; more, inevitably, fail.

But even if you are competent at entertaining an audience and selling a book at the same time, being invited to appear at these festivals is by no means a given. Audiences tend to be conservative with a small c, keen to see people who they recognise from television or their earlier books.

In ultima misura, però, i festival letterari sarebbero sintomo di un problema più profondo relativo all’establishment intellettuale contemporaneo:

But the real problem with them is that they are another, increasingly pernicious, feature of a literary establishment that has ceased to prize writing for its own sake, and that has instead become hooked on the cheaper methadone of headlines and “initiatives”.