Almost everybody in South Australia now knows we have the annual Adelaide Writers’ Week event, due to a flawed attempt to uninvite a writer that then spiralled into a mass boycott and then a pile-on by groups issuing lofty statements of condemnation from around the world. Something wonderfully lampooned by Adelaide’s own Professor Longsword.
It’s worth noting that although this event began in 1960 and has grown in stature and attendance numbers since then, for many non-literary-minded South Australians, the event comes and goes in relative obscurity.
That changed a few weeks ago when the Adelaide Festival board disinvited Palestinian-Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah on January 8, citing “cultural sensitivities” post the 2025 Bondi Beach shooting.
Suddenly, Adelaide Writers’ Week was in the news, and so was Ms Abdel-Fattah. Both experienced The Streisand Effect in different ways. The Streisand Effect is a phenomenon where an attempt to censor, hide, or suppress information paradoxically increases public awareness and dissemination of that information.
In the case of the author, her book is now being bought in record numbers by people who are taking that action as a sign of solidarity. For the Festival, it’s had its governance and actions prodded, poked, and lampooned by all and sundry.
Until now, the only times Adelaide Writer’s Week ever became a topic for discussion in the front bar, would have been:
- Various appearances by Germaine Greer in the 1970s and ‘80s for being so forthright and confronting
- Discussion about Helen Demidenko’s Miles Franklin-winning The Hand That Signed the Paper, after it had been exposed as fabricated Holocaust revisionism
- Rankles resulting from Patrick White’s 1986 speech about writers and critics, and how the former should ignore the latter or risk conforming to norms and writing boring, uninspiring stuff, although most discussion would have been about him boycotting the premiere of the opera based on his novel, Voss, because Queen Elizabeth II was invited
There might have been some other times but my expectation is that much frank discussion would have taken place in the shade of the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden, nearby cafes and restaurants, or at post-event soirees.
I think it is fair to say that everybody lost this year. Patrons, caterers, tech people, volunteers, authors, publishers, bookshops, the Adelaide Festival, and South Australia.
Upon reflection, it has become apparent to me that writers’ festivals are both dangerous and necessary. They are dangerous because writers tap deep human motivations and complex interactions and in the process will surface dialogue and scenarios of great discomfort and even evil. Without such, there is little scope for redemption and wonder. This means that organisers and sponsors and official supports (ie government), need to hold their nerve and weather knee jerk reactions, trusting in the well-read as being able to hold conflicting ideas in balance and navigate difficult thoughts and emotions. That is what makes literature so satisfying. It’s also what scares the living daylights out of control freaks who fear becoming associated with the dark parts of the process.
But that is what makes them necessary. Without a forum where ideas can be presented and dissected, where people can laugh, argue, cry, and learn (without a safety net or patronising idea curation), a society loses a chance to exercise its thinking and discussing muscles. When the powers that be rob us of the ability to think out loud about things, even very uncomfortable things, we lose an important safety valve that protects us from ideological capture by two-dimensional jingoism and disingenuous actors who want to manipulate us into adherents of their cults and -isms.
This song tries to convey that tension, that frustrating shortsightedness that patrons of writers’ festivals do not need protecting from themselves. They are hungry for being exposed to the distasteful and horrid, if such experiences have space held for observing how those positions stand or flounder in the bright afternoon sunshine.
It also echoes Patrick White’s urging of writers to not kowtow to conventions or the oft surface level, ego-trapped criticism of reviewers.
Ah, the unbearable lightness of writing. And reading. And discussing. And thinking. In public.
Uncomfortable Ideas Lyrics
[Verse 1]
I wrote a story
About a naughty man
Some parts were gory
Then he joined the Klan
I went quite deep
Into his mind
As he lost sleep
Crime after crime
[Verse 2]
And then one day
A stranger came
Said change your ways
Treat all the same
The naughty man
Just shook his head
With gun in hand
He shot him dead
[Refrain 1]
It isn’t Dostoevsky
It isn’t Harper Lee
But the narrative is risky
And the dialogue runs free
[Chorus]
You need darkness in a story
To add contrast to the light
And critics need ignoring
By those brave enough to write
The books that live forever
That stay with us for years
Are by writers who endeavour
Through uncomfortable ideas
[Verse 3]
Then the naughty man
Was in the Middle East
Said he had a plan
To lead to more deceased
So he put a bomb
Into a worship space
Said it was a gift from
A tired human race
[Verse 4]
Then some people said
I would be to blame
If I end up dead
If I end up maimed
If only they would read
Right through to the end
They would have red my plea
For humans to transcend
[Refrain 2]
It’s not Charlotte Bronte
And it’s not Patrick White
But if you’re thinking deeply
You’re approaching my book right
[Chorus]
You need darkness in a story
To add contrast to the light
And critics need ignoring
By those brave enough to write
The books that live forever
That stay with us for years
Are by writers who endeavour
Through uncomfortable ideas
[Bridge]
Then the invitation, came for me to speak
Outside in the sunshine, at Adelaide Writers’ Week
But hidden in the shadows, came voices of dissent
Who demanded publicly, that I needed to repent
Who was it made the call, it wasn’t those who read
And I know it wasn’t patrons, even those who disagreed
It came from simple minds, who cannot understand
The wonder and the wisdom, from having books in hand
[Chorus]
You need darkness in a story
To add contrast to the light
And critics need ignoring
By those brave enough to write
The books that live forever
That stay with us for years
Are by writers who endeavour
Through uncomfortable ideas
La La La La La La La La
La La La La La La La
La La La La La La La
La La La La La La La
La La La La La La La La
La La La La La La La
La La La La La La La
La La La La La La La
You need darkness in a story
To add contrast to the light
And critics need ignoring
By those brave enough to write
The books that live forever
That stay with us for years
Are by writers who endeavour
Through uncomfortable ideas
Listen To Uncomfortable Ideas
Uncomfortable Ideas Raw Scratchings
Here are the rough notes as I wrote this song. I made a few refinements while recording, as meter became clearer.
