Mary Baird, Anne Enright, Jane Smiley and Elizabeth Strout as The Grand Dames of Letters delighted an audience of star-struck readers, making literary history at Adelaide’s Town Hall
Presented by: Adelaide Writers’ Week
Reviewed: 2 March 2024
In 1964 The Beatles famously stood on the balcony of Adelaide Town Hall and waved to a crowd of 350,000 fans. Nearly sixty years later, amid the bustle of Fringe and the Adelaide Festival, the landmark building hosted another fab four: Mary Beard, Anne Enright, Jane Smiley and Elizabeth Strout. Seated in front of the magnificent golden pipe organ and under the heroic baubles of chandeliers, there couldn’t have been a more fitting venue for an event titled The Grande Dames of Letters, where the revered authors talked feminism, truth, power and politics. Distinguished journalist and former broadcaster of ABC’s The Drum, Julia Baird – who is also a critically acclaimed author herself – chaired the session, wearing a velvet green pants suit with a t-shirt reading ‘Smash the Patriarchy’. Louise Adler, as Director of Adelaide Writers’ Festival, you’ve smashed it. If opening night was anything to go by, the next week of author talks is going to be huge.
These, as everyone is constantly saying, are unprecedented times, and Baird dove straight into the meat of them, asking how each writer saw this moment in history. English classicist Beard, who’s dedication to furthering an understanding of Ancient Rome is vociferous, was poised to begin, telling us to look to the Roman Emperors. They were awful men who remained in power for such a long time because they surrounded themselves with subservients. She insisted we learn from them and cause a stink if we want a change. Enright – inaugural Irish Fiction Laureate and winner of the Man Booker Prize – said there’s just so many competing truths, it’s like a novel. Zooming in at four in the morning from the US, Strout said there’s too much focus on the outer life; focus on the inner one. If you’ve read her modern classic Olive Kitteridge, you’d know she’s onto something. Finally, Smiley, who’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Thousand Acres has recently been banned in the US state of Iowa – a state in which she lived for twenty-five years – said to write about it, so future generations will learn about it. But will we learn from it? What can books do anyway when the Earth is dying and so are thousands of people in war-torn countries? General consensus was that they, as writers, must show up for work, must do the work, must keep producing books.
The authors spoke about an intimacy between a person and a page that cannot be replicated by a person on their screen, and if the packed hall was anything to go by, my guess is the roughly four hundred in attendance agreed. Not quite as big as the crowd that gathered for The Beatles, but tickets sold out immediately for this event so imagine how many would’ve been there if they could.
Mary Beard’s latest book is Emperor of Rome; Anne Enright’s is The Wren, The Wren; Elizabeth Strout’s is Tell Me Everything; and Jane Smiley’s is Lucky. All of the writers, except for Strout, will be appearing again at the Adelaide Writers’ Festival, which runs until Thursday and is at the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden.
Reviewed by Heather Taylor Johnson
Venue: Adelaide Town Hall
Season: ended
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