Well, not quite..

Due to what surely can only be an administrative blunder, we scored central front-row tickets to the “opening” (the festival actually started on Wednesday) event of the Readers and Writers Festival at the Aotea Centre last night, where we were witness to a rare case of audible audience dissent. More after the jump…

As is the way with such events, chair Kim Hill opened with a brief introduction, and then we were on to the writers: British writer Sarah Hall, Witi Ihimaera, the recently Pulitzer Prize-wining Junot Diaz, and venerable elder statesman J.M Coetzee. Sarah Hall started, reading from her work, The Carhullan Army, followed by Kim Hill leading her in a discussion about, amongst other things, dystopian fantasies, regional writers, and female-only terrorist organisations – all quite thought-provoking subjects and certainly much more interesting than the “so, where do you get your ideas from?” school of talking with writers.

After about twenty-five minutes or so, though, it was obvious that some in the audience though Hall’s time was up -the reading was scheduled for 75 mins and there were still three writers to go. I heard the woman behind me say “What is going on?!” to her startled companion, and there was definitely a lot of rustling about. Shortly after, a fit of staged coughing broke out, and then, mid a question from Hill, a woman two rows back from us called out: “Can we move on please?”

Dear reader, I was flabbergasted, as was the panel – Kim Hill exclaimed “Extraordinary!” and immediately introduced Witi Ihimaera, who was very gracious and proved he had been listening to Hall; J.M Coetzee squirmed uncomfortably and Junot Diaz endeared himself to me immediately by doing a great comic opening and closing of his mouth. Hall looked embarrassed and angry – I think I would have been tempted to flounce off had I been in her shoes – and I really felt for her.

While I’ve often yearned for a bit more Latin-style passion in our audiences, this was just unaccountably impolite – not only to Hill and Hall, but also to the audience members, like myself, who would have been happy for them to keep talking. I know some people were worried about the time limit – understandably the festival is strict on timings as they have a number of events one after the other, but this was the final event for the night so surely Hill thought she could have a bit more leeway. Additionally, it’s a little insulting to Hill to think she couldn’t time her interviews – how long has she worked in timed-down-to-the-second broadcasting?

On the way out, and during the show, I heard a number of comments that “We just wanted to hear her talk to J.M Coetzee” – well, joke was on them, as he famously never takes parts in question and answer sessions – he only does readings.

My new future husband, (no, I haven’t actually met him, but that’s never stopped me before…) Junot Diaz, had a good reprimand, delivered in his good-natured manner: “Remember you come to these things to hear authors!”

It did make me a wonder why lots of people were there – if you’re just going because you want to be seen, surely you just sit there and look good, but if you’re going because you’re genuinely interested in books, surely you’d only be happy if you got more than a five minute sound bite from each writer.