Non-writers dumbing down festivals, says Tim Winton

The dumbing-down of writers festivals started when they began inviting people who hadn’t written a book, says Tim Winton.

Melbourne Writers Festival guest Tim Winton: ‘They have become a form of public entertainment’. Picture: Kelly Barnes

The dumbing-down of writers festivals started when they began inviting personalities who hadn’t written a book, said author Tim Winton, who appeared last night at the Melbourne Writers Festival amid a program that includes sessions about tattoos and pet meditation.

The four-time Miles Franklin award winner, who is promoting his novel The Shepherd’s Hut, said writers festivals were “television for ugly people” and often were not purely literary in content.

He mentioned political memoirists, not by name, who turned up at festivals but whose books had been ghost-written by others.

Former NSW Premier and Foreign Minister in the Gillard Government, Bob Carr. Picture: John Feder

“I’m sure some people feel that they are being dumbed down,” Winton said yesterday.

“But if that’s the case, it’s not to do with this current round of controversy … You’ve got really big stars showing up at writers festivals who aren’t writers and often haven’t written their own books.

“They have become a form of public entertainment.”

The Melbourne and Brisbane writers festivals have been in the news because they closed the door to Germaine Greer, whose new essay On Rape argues for a radical rethink about dealing with non-consensual sex.

Winton said he was not familiar with details of the Greer matter, but noted that writers festivals should “not be afraid of ideas”.

“I don’t think people should be scared to say things that are ­uncomfortable,” he said.

“I hope that we wouldn’t be censoring ourselves any more than we’d be allowing ourselves to be censored. But it sounds like a lot of first-world, white-person problems to me.”

Guests at the Melbourne Writers Festival include Russian political journalist Masha Gessen, philosopher Raimond Gaita and former foreign minister Bob Carr, who was excluded from the Brisbane festival line-up.

Germaine Greer.

Artistic director Marieke Hardy has told ABC radio that “I wouldn’t program Germaine Greer” and “I am also not interested in placing things in the world that hurt people right now”.

Her program includes “pet meditation” with a psychic, ­appointments with a tattooist, and an event for women where speakers and audience will be naked.

Winton said Melbourne had a highly developed literary scene and the writers festival appeared to be trying something different.

“It’s hard in Melbourne because they’ve got the Wheeler Centre and what seems like a perennial literary festival going on anyway,” he said. “Maybe the people who are running these shows need a point of difference.”

Winton was speaking after the opening night in Adelaide of That Eye, the Sky, a stage adaptation by State Theatre Company of South Australia of his 1986 novel.

“I haven’t read the book for a thousand years, I’d forgotten half of what’s in it,” he said.