Fortress of nerd-dom

When did novelists and poets become such dullards?

I have nothing against literary festivals. In fact I've even participated in a few myself. But there I was reading the newspaper, scrolling through the lineup of the upcoming local litfest, and feeling completely uninspired. Don't get me wrong, there are some great writers coming from all over the world who have written some fantastic books, some of which I've even found the time to read. But it was the personalities that failed to attract and get me excited. If I'm going to pay good money to go hear an author speak or read or opinionate, he/she better be worth the expense. They'd better be as surprising and inspiring and entertaining as any performer I'd want to see or hear. Musicians, for example, know that they better have a great show because in the digital era live performance is how they make their living. What happened to the days when novelists and poets had to sing for their supper? Staring at the newspaper, my mind suddenly began to wax nostalgic for an era, even I can recall, when novelists and poets actually had personalities.

But did writers ever really have to sing for their supper? Maybe it was only the mediocre writers who had to pound the pavement to drum up an audience. Actually it was the exact opposite. There was a time when writers understood that it was part and parcel of the job, and the best most renowned writers, from Oscar Wilde to Dickens to Mark Twain to Walt Whitman, were relentless at it. They embraced public performance, understanding that it was an essential component of what they did. And they were as well known for their stage appearances as their writing. Later, television was a boon to writers and some novelists were masters of the medium. Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal come to mind, both of whom had feuds with William F. Buckley and each other, stirring controversy with wit and verbal swordsmanship. 

In Canada we had poet Irving Layton,  Leonard Cohen's mentor of whom he famously said "I taught Irving how to dress and he taught me how to live forever." Layton appeared regularly on CBC's show Fighting Words together with other author-guests like novelists Robertson Davies and Hugh Garner and poet Earle Birney. But of his cohort, it was Layton who perfected the image of the celebrity-writer persona with his verbal stridency. A bit later Layton was matched by Mordecai Richler who seemed to have a particular gift for offending, and embraced the role.

No doubt, over the last few decades, the chill of political correctness, on the one hand, and the ubiquitousness of media and pervasiveness of opinionating 'talking-heads' on the other hand, have mitigated against the importance of the public intellectual. But more than that, maybe novelists in particular have simply given up. With everyone trying to get attention for one endeavour or another, selling their wares on a variety of platforms and being more outlandish in the process, the nerds have simply decided to retire to their laptops in their fortresses of nerd-dom. They are content to write their novels and not get noticed because they know that in the crowded marketplace of attention-seeking, they don't stand a snowball's chance in hell of competing. Could Mailer or Layton compete nowadays, in the era of media stars like Kim Kardashian? It's an intriguing question to ponder. Not too long ago the late Christopher Hitchens showed how adept a writer could be at courting controversy, leveraging media attention with articulateness and wit to his advantage. Were he speaking at this year's litfest I'd at least be tempted to shell out the bucks to hear him. Alas Hitchens is gone, and anyway he wasn't a novelist, which was my main point. The last novelist I can think of who garnered significant media-hype for his public appearances was Salman Rushdie and it took a fatwa calling for his murder and ten years of hiding to drum up public enthusiasm. I guess my biggest concern is not about boring novelists after all. Turns out to be boring audiences who, I fear, wouldn't know the difference between Kim Kardashian's booty and Irving Layton's intellectual bravado, or rather they'd prefer a public showing of the former over the latter.