Bullying, and how to get away with it

bookwitch

June 5

I should have taken my own advice and left while the party was still fun.

Although, if I had, it wouldn't have made any difference to what's happening in the book festival world now. And it's unbelievably ugly. It will probably get worse.

And I used to think it was just that 'my kind' of books were no longer published.

I would like to think that authors and others involved in the book trade are quite good at reading and understanding words (unlike, say, the people supporting the 45th president). Far too many people have signed a list against, well, is it against Baillie Gifford? Or is it actually against book festivals, and those authors who haven't signed the list?

As some sensible writers in the media have pointed out, they picked easy targets; those who would care, and then stand back. At first I thought why don't the festivals stand firm and refuse to be intimidated? But as someone said, if they are threatening the festivals, then visitors to those festivals are potentially in danger. So they 'had to' do what the signatories to the lists say. Give up the 'dirty' sponsor money. Or else.

This will presumably mean the end of festivals, at least as we have known them. Which is the same result as if they had ignored the list from last August, warning that the signing authors would never darken the doors of the festival ever again.

With 'friends' like these, who needs a sleazy government slashing funding?

The Baillie Gifford statement was extremely well written. Can those on the list see and understand what is being said?

As someone pointed out, the sponsor money will be spent on something else. The climate is not being saved while the books world is being savaged. And as for the situation in Gaza and Israel, maybe it'd be a worthy sacrifice to have no literature, if only these lists threatening book festivals in the UK could put a stop to the atrocities.

Will I attend the Edinburgh International Book Festival at its new venue this August? (Will Salman Rushdie?) All it takes is some nutcase to take it upon themselves to set things right, and they needn't even be anything to do with the list-people at all. The idea is now out there. And the people of Gaza will most likely be no better off.

(I speed read through the names on the list. With very few exceptions, I'd never heard of them. But that makes little difference. The threat is out there.)