Martin Puchner, Byron and Anita Wien Professor of Drama and of English and Comparative Literature, Harvard University Department of English.
Excerpted from “The Greatest Show on Earth: How a Literature Festival Became a Force in Cultural Diplomacy” by Prof. Martin Puchner, Byron and Anita Wien Professor of Drama and of English and Comparative Literature, Harvard University Department of English, and reproduced here with permission.
If you want to know what is going on in the world of culture, the best place to be is the Jaipur Literature Festival, which takes place every January in the capital of Rajasthan, India. Begun nineteen years ago on the margins of a crafts fair by Namita Gokhale, William Dalrymple, and Sanjoy Roy, it has become a celebration of literature and ideas that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors every year, and tens of millions online. For a week, authors can feel like rock stars, drawing huge crowds on open-air stages. But it is not just scale that makes this festival different from any other. Something unusual happens here every January, a heady mixing of people and ideas that makes culture feel vibrant and alive. What’s the secret of this festival’s success? The answer matters since JLF, as it is widely known, has much to teach those of us who work in culture and the arts.
There are some obvious answers, and some less obvious ones. One is celebrities, which doesn’t just mean famous authors and Nobel Prize winners, though there are plenty of those, but also Bollywood stars and influencers. Another ingredient is radical openness. With basic tickets entirely free, Jaipur attracts the greatest imaginable variety of visitors, many of whom drive in on scooters or hitch rides from far away. Hundreds of young literature enthusiasts volunteer as helpers; they both manage the crowd and are part of it.
JLF turns literature into an event. Literature here is performed, enacted before our very eyes, as ideas are debated and come alive.
Most astonishing to me has always been the fact that some portion of visitors do not, or even cannot, read literature. What draws them to a literature festival? The fact that JLF turns literature into an event. Literature here is performed, enacted before our very eyes, as ideas are debated and come alive. The organizers have a knack for finding the right people and matching them up in intriguing ways. The author of a book on mushrooms meets an Indian politician; a publisher of an important imprint talks to the inventor of the Internet. There’s always a fair amount of improvisation. Once, I was asked to fill in on a panel about the blue economy with just enough time to google what the blue economy was. (It’s the water-based equivalent of the green economy.) Over time, I’ve learned to go with the flow, so to speak, and trust that the organizers know what they’re doing. It’s all part of the JLF vibe.
☆ The views represented herein are those of the interview subjects and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Mittal Institute, its staff, or its steering committee.