WHEN LITERATURE WENT POP

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I was sixteen and at home with my mate Doug when we decided to run away. It was 1970, and one afternoon feeling bored and excluded from the active world, and having seen the movie Woodstock - and knowing about the events of 1968 - we wanted to be with our generation at the second Isle of Wight Festival. Jimi Hendrix was going to play. It would be an education more important than education.

I collected all the money I had made from my paper-round and we went to London on the train, and then took another train to the Isle of Wight, and a ferry across to the island. We were wearing jeans and T-shirts. It hadn’t occurred to us to take any other clothes.

The festival was mayhem. There were no tickets, people just showed up. The scene was so huge – almost a million people – and with very little infrastructure; we could barely see any of the bands or hear the music, and it soon started to get cold. As night closed, we lay down on the open ground and began to realise how foolish this expedition was.

It was an important moment; the cultural paradigm had shifted from the written word - literature and drama - to music, and everything that went with it; fashion, sexuality, drugs, photography and so on.  At the same time, artists like Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell and particularly Bob Dylan were transforming music with their use of language in lyric writing.

I was privileged to be young as this revolution took place, but I wanted to be a writer and couldn’t help wondering where someone like me might fit into all this.  

It wasn’t until much later, in 1988, that Peter Florence established the Hay festival in a small, bookish town in Wales, and everything in literature changed.  I was aware that poets like Allen Ginsberg did public readings, or literary gigs. Charles Dickens read to huge audiences, here and in the United States. Nevertheless, it is difficult to imagine some of the twentieth century’s greatest authors, Kafka, Woolf or Beckett, appearing in public, signing books, and making television appearances.

The literary festival, as it is today, was a new form in the early nineties, and in keeping with developments in publishing, which occurred during the Thatcherite period. This was the popification of literature, when writers became celebrities.

My first novel The Buddha of Suburbia was published in 1990, and my British, American and foreign publishers wanted me to give readings and talks to festivals around the world. I had to learn to sell myself as writer to the public through the contemporary media.

Talking in public didn’t come naturally to me; at first I was terrified, I thought I shouldn’t be doing this, I didn’t know how to describe my writing process, which is, after all, intuitive. But I began to understand that once I’d worked out a story of my method, which was probably more amusing than accurate, I could engage audiences, many of whom were tyro writers looking for direction. This foreshadowed the formation of the creative writing industry, which is now worth millions.  

So when The Buddha of Suburbia was published I started to go to festivals, standing up and reading the first chapter of the book, and then answering questions. Although the terror never went away, I came to enjoy it, since the audience were receptive and I was aware that there would be young writers of colour who might be inspired by my example.

During this period, literary festivals sprang up all over the world, in middle-sized towns, as well as the big ones; Hay, Edinburgh, Adelaide, Jaipur, New York, and so on. This was great for the business of literature, writers commanding large audiences, signing books in tents with huge queues.

Small publishers were swallowed by big corporations, and were able to pay large advances for books. Writers were interviewed, appeared on television, and became national figures. The world of literature began to resemble other parts of celebrity culture.  

Festivals remove you from your isolation and enable you to explore. Carlo and I spent two days in drab Belgrade with Irvine Welsh, including a bizarre visit to the Tito memorial. On another occasion, I was with Sachin visiting my family in Pakistan for the Karachi literary festival, which was patrolled by the army bearing Kalashnikovs.  In Brazil I made good friends with a private investigator from San Francisco, a man who specialised in extracting rich families’ children from cults.

In Mantua, one of the most pleasant festivals, Salman Rushdie was detained in the police station, apparently for his own safety, and we had some difficulty in springing him. In Ferrara, doing a gig with Zadie Smith, and agreeing to have a drink with her later, I was dismayed to see she had a book-signing queue four times the length of mine. I had sit behind a desk twiddling my pen, waiting for her to finish signing.

Festivals, where literature is the currency, are a treat for writers. You are interviewed and get recognition. You have sex. You get drunk and see places you would never otherwise visit, at someone else’s expense. Journalists take you seriously. Staying in good hotels, you meet other writers over breakfast, and enjoy conversations you wouldn’t have otherwise. At last, you think, books matter, they are central again, like music. And most importantly, you meet readers, something you never do in the normal course of events.

Having finished writing Shattered, a memoir of my year in hospital, I am keen to reengage with the business of literature; discussing my work with audiences, meeting booklovers, and becoming a writer again, rather than just an injured body. Writing is a lonely hallucination; at festivals, you meet others who share in the dream.