Writing and literature - is there a class issue? Discuss

Is there? Here are my thoughts.

There was a time when only the rich or people wealthy enough could read. They would receive education and only a very small number of the poor might be fortunate enough to be taught to read, through charities or religious groups. And, of course, the working classes would often be far too busy earning a living to have time to read, and they would not be able to afford books.

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw the start of the education of the masses, and suddenly books became readily available, lending libraries proliferated and most importantly, working people were able to access schools, and eventually universities. Literature for the many blossomed. The joy of reading became a part of everyday life for all people. The learning that literature brings, the opening of minds became an unstoppable force.

But there are barriers. Books cost money, even online versions - as do the devices needed for reading these. With most countries experiencing an increasing divide between rich and poor, affecting access to education as much as anything else, the love and development of literature may be wavering for the poorer in our society. And writing, as with many other artistic disciplines suffers when fewer people have the time and space to be creative.

If you have to work to live, then the time you have available to write is so limited. There are of course, many stories of successful authors overcoming difficult circumstances and publishing great works. But they are few and far between. To write successfully, some basic ingredients are physical space, mental space and time. For many, especially working parents - or working single parents in particular - finding the time to write when you are not so tired that you can't think, is a luxury that many of us simply cannot afford. There must be many wonderful works of literature that we are missing out on for the sake of so many writers not having enough money to live on to write.

Of course, it's not just about the sitting down and writing part of it. There's the isolation unless you happen to be in some kind of support group. There's learning the skills - we never imagine that an artist will simply start to plop paint on canvas without first learning some basic techniques, nor do we expect the pianist to start playing a concerto without first having a few lessons and learning the scales. But lessons for writers - at least in Gibraltar - are non-existent. Students - young people who go away to university - can take creative writing degrees. There are some who don't go away to study because while they might be great writers, they might not be equipped with three A levels. Nor might their families be able to supplement the maintenance grant to help them live abroad while they study.

This means, then, that writing and literature continues to some extent to hold a place of greater value in households of more affluent economic means. There's a whole raft of social and economic theories about this including nurture, habit, role modelling and so on. But essentially, there are more barriers to entering the literary world if you are working class or poor than if you are middle class or rich. That's not to say that working class people can't overcome these, but barriers that limit entry to one of our essential arts empoverish our culture.

Take our celebrated annual literary festival. A littering of Gibraltarian writers - thank goodness, positive role modelling for youngsters (if they can take time off school or work to attend the talks) if they can afford the ticket prices. I've totted up that if I, as an adult, want to see all of the  Gibraltarian writers, it will cost me around £84 if I include those talking about Gibraltar or other Gibraltarian writers. I'd like to see more well-known writers too so if I attended several more, then I would need to fork out over £100. Ouch. No can do.

So as a Gibraltarian who loves literature, I already feel a bit excluded from this event. Attending it in previous years, with great circumspection and counting of coins, I have been astounded at the plummy English accents, the twinsets and pearls, the way that the scruffier classes shuffle about uncomfortably in venues that perhaps give off a false grandeur - the University, the Garrison Library, the Convent - and the chatter on having lunch in Soto the next day. Well removed from the rookeries of our Upper Town where wildly intelligent and creative writers may well be lurking but with a sense of exclusion from the upper crust ambience of the Gib Lit Fest. 

There are some good things in our literary festival if you can access it and feel at ease. But it is growing increasingly exclusive, an occasion for all the wealthy ex pats from the Costa trying to keep a finger in the English (it's largely about the English) intellectual frame, or their families, a chance to 'do' the former colony and still circulate among their own. And while in reality it may not be quite as extreme a picture as I'm painting, if you attend this year, please take note. I know I'm not the only one who has observed this because of the many conversations I have had with others attending. Even the Brits notice. This year, there's a couple of Lords (both Tories) - figures of politics if not of literature at its most sublime - appearing, along with a chef, the Green Goddess (a true icon of get your butt moving literature) a couple of professors, historians, journalists, a poet or two and some novelists. 

Gibunco Gibraltar International Literary Festival 2019

The benefits of the festival being several, including filling some hotel rooms and restaurant tables, I would not dream of it not taking place. But it looks to me like Gibraltar is just another venue in a circuit of similar events. I really am not sure what value it has culturally at all, what it does to develop our own literary talent. Do our books sell to the visitors that attend? The festival bookshop, after all, is the only physical book shop stocking new titles in Gibraltar.

In Gibraltar, we cannot expect to generate a body of our own literature - and I'm just talking about written works worth reading, let alone great or superior works which last well beyond a single generation - if we do not ensure that writing and reading is accessible to everyone in our society, that being an author is something realistic that anyone can aspire to become. We are a nation of story tellers - that much is clear if you happen to wander to Casemates for a late breakfast and tune in to the many conversations held over coffee and churros. So where are the stories? And the poems? There are some authors: Mary Chiappe and Sam Benady, Mark Sanchez, Humbert Hernandez, Giordano Durante, Rebecca Faller, Gabriel Moreno among a few others. But are these household names? And are they recognisable outside of Gibraltar? I know Mark Sanchez is making inroads in the world of academia outside of Gibraltar, and Gabriel Moreno and Jonathan Teuma are known in at least UK and Spain, but unless Gibraltar really fosters literary talent at home - and that means opening up writing as an art form and nurturing it far more than we do, then we will always lie in the shadows of our former colonial masters, masters of a class system devised to keep the natives in their place and away from those of 'better breeding': the class system at its worst.

So is writing and literature a class issue? This is by no means a top-grade essay; I would need to try much harder to achieve that. But I have made my point: yes it is, and in Gibraltar with the way we continue to lap at overseas talent and avoid growing our own, literature is as much a class issue as anywhere else.