The Franschhoek Literary Festival: a few inconsequential notes from the fringe
This past weekend was the Franschhoek Literary Festival. If you’re a South African bookish sort of person, you’ve probably seen a fair number of these sorts of posts already. If you’re not, all you really need to know is that Franschhoek as an entity—as opposed to a romanticised ideal of a small town—is very monied, very white, very business.
And so I almost want to use air quotes around the word literary, because each year it seems less a festival of books and authors and more a sort of ‘how-to’ workshop slash Facebook or LinkedIn post. Each year, it seems to me, the non-fiction part of the festival veers away from the literary to the journalistic and the fiction part of the book festival dribbles away a little more to … workshops?
Look, maybe workshops are thing people love. And it’s not that the festival doesn’t host fiction authors, of course it does, it’s just … there just seems to be so much less of it each year.
I did a very unscientific round-up of the events this time and found that more than 50% were talks about politics and current events and non-fiction mostly around politics and current events (is hot-take journalism and current affairs ‘literary’ these days?); while fiction panels of more than two authors came to only about 15% of the event; and fiction panels where it was a single author promo (and someone who probably sat on one of the group panels anyway) only about 17%.
So I guess you could say, okay, fiction (novels and poetry and kids books) made up about 32% of the festival. A third.
The last of the pie was mostly workshops of which a few were repeats.
I knew we were in some trouble when News24 took over the posters around town changed from author quotes to anonymous cliches about wine.
I mean without the politics and wine and food what do you have? Just stories?
Yuck.
Nevertheless, the weekend was good.
Not as saucy as the old days (read: some ten years ago when I first started going). You need more screwball writers for that. A note from my journal reads: ‘Not enough clever drunks and arseholes around to make it really interesting.’ I stand by this. Everyone’s incredibly upstanding these days. Probably because all the cynical Gen X writers got old and had to stop drinking and smoking and all the Millennials are terribly healthy. At least the Penguin cocktails moment, full of genuinely lovely people and delicious snacks, was fun and gossipy enough to scratch that itch.
I’d like to say that I attended talk after talk after talk, but all the ones I was interested in had been gobbled up by FLF members days before the tickets went on sale to the public and nothing else really interested me, so we spent most of our time at our pretty little AirBnB drinking bubbles and basking in the soft dappled sunlight that winked and flirted through the surrounding poplars. The river at the bottom of the property was in full spate this year; the squirrels were chattier than usual. The air was warm. Climate catastrophe making itself useful. Discovered the apple tarte tatin number at French Connection. Bliss. The Huguenot Chocolates are overrated. I read more of Ghostwritten and fell more in love with David Mitchell’s storytelling. The piece set in Mongolia had me weeping salty tears.
It’s very inspirational, which is good because I’m getting ready to Start a Notebook. The next story is arriving; it’s time to prepare a welcome.
But back to the festival.
I do find myself wondering how long this will last in this format. The festival I mean.
The majority of the people who attend are over fifty (even sixty, I might venture). There’s not a noticeable influx of young blood preparing a pipeline of ticket sales for future events. Oh, some publishers are trying very hard to encourage young people to spread their young-people, future-friendly pheromones around there, but honestly I just don’t see it happening. If a younger generation was going to be filling those halls they’d be doing it by now.
And then there’s the actual content of the festival.
Given what we know about local English fiction in this country (dying), given how the process and politics of admission to the Literary Inner Circle works (impermeable to novelty), given how little genuinely new local fiction is being published each year (eye-wateringly little), given how mostly South Africans just care about sports and politics (or just trying to survive), I just can’t imagine why they’d keep bothering with the fiction part of the festival. Just call it a ‘politics and hot-take talk shop’ with a fiction author or two thrown in with the wine and food for entertainment and be done with it.
Oh wait.
That’s … kind of … okay … got you. I’m up to speed now.
Til next year etcetera.
Live, laugh, rage against The Fates who have tied a black thread around your name,
t
TANYA MEESON 