UEA Literary Festival: John Lanchester

On March 13^th, I went to the first event of the University of East Anglia Literary Festival featuring John Lanchester. The Literary Festival is put on by the University of East Anglia and is sponsored by Waterstone’s, Premier Inn, The Poetry Trust, Writer’s Centre Norwich, The Last Bar and Restaurant, and Swallowtail Print. Individual tickets for each event cost six pounds, but people can choose to purchase a season ticket for forty-two pounds and students can purchase one for thirty-six pounds. The event is held in Lecture Theatre One, located on the University of East Anglia’s campus. At the end of each event, the Waterstone’s bookstore located on campus opens for the author of the night to come sign books for people if they so choose. This event was, just like the majority of the others, run well and organized.

John Lanchester has had work as a football reporter, obituary writer, book editor, restaurant critic, and deputy editor of the London Review of Books. He contributes regularly to the New Yorker, has written three fictional novels and two non-fictional novels, and has won prizes for his work, such as the E.M. Forster Award. Judging by this information, Lanchester is clearly a prominent figure in the literary world. At tonight’s event, he was going to be reading excerpts from his novel titled Capital, which is about the effects of the economic crash on the lives of people, an issue that is still prevalent today.

Like every other literary events I have attended, there was a table in the front with promotional information about other literary and arts events. However, because this event was run by the university, there were also flyers about upcoming lectures in different academic departments. Because the main advertising for literary, arts, and educational events seems to be at similar in nature at these front desks, the advertisers are only reaching a select group of people. I can only wonder if this is done because they only want to advertise to people who take value in these kinds of events instead of the entire general public. The audience in this crowd was much older than the audiences in the past events: the majority of the attendees were elderly, with a few looking to be middle aged.  There were also a few students. I recognized a student who had attended another event at the Writer’s Centre workers in the audience. The delegates from the Norwich Showcase, as mentioned in the beginning of the event, were in attendance. The room was only a little over half full. 

The host of the evening was an economist named Sean. Though he is not a literary professional, I believe he was chosen because Lanchester’s novel was about the recent economic crisis. After Lanchester was introduced by the host, he read an excerpt from his novel for about a half hour. The section he chose to read was humorous, portraying the domestic issues of a husband and his wife during the economic crisis. It is possible he selected a humorous section to read in order to keep the audience’s attention, as in the past events I have attended, I noticed that the audience has indeed been the most attentive during the more comedic parts and readings of the events. After the reading, Lanchester and the host had a fifteen-minute discussion about the book Capital, as well as Lanchester’s writing in general. Questions were asked about the difference between writing fiction and non-fictional, about the financial issues in Capital, and what Lanchester was trying to accomplish with his story. After this discussion, the audience was allowed to ask Lanchester questions. Throughout the event, I noticed the audience was very attentive, and this notion was reaffirmed during the question-and-answer period. All of the questions were about commentss Lanchester made during the event, his thoughts on how to write about issues today, his writing style in general, and about his specific works, including Capital and another work on the economic crisis called Whoops!. Asking questions related to comments made earlier in the event demonstrates the audience was indeed paying attention to Lanchester and was interested in what he was saying. Also, asking specific questions about his work and writing style indicate that the audience members most likely were familiar with the author and his work before they chose to attend the event, and that they really did want to be there.

After the question-and-answer period ended fifteen minutes later, the event concluded and all were invited to Waterstone’s for a book signing. I waited outside of the event for a bit to see if many people did go to Waterstone’s, but only a select few did. This shows that though people may have gone to hear Lanchester speak, not many had a very passionate interest in him, his work, or what he has to say as they purposely missed an opportunity to meet and speak with him personally.