The rise of the author as performer has been accompanied by the rise of a sometimes baffling phenomenon: the signing queue. Why do people do it?
‘Because I can,†says Stephen Ballinger, a teacher from Bronllys and in the queue for Jhumpa Lahiri at this year’s Hay literary festival. He tends to recognise other signing-queue regulars. ‘We’re just middle-aged men with bad habits. Book collectors. Which is almost a pejorative term. But we do read.†Carol Burgan is retiring this year from her job as headteacher of a primary school in Shrewsbury. She has come every year for 19 years.
She doesn’t get everything signed, but she enjoyed listening to Lahiri talk about dislocation (about how, however far you travel, you simply meet yourself at the other end) so she thought she might as well.
Over in the Harriet Lamb queue is someone who never meant to be there at all — Karima Ola, an investment fund analyst from London, ended up in Lamb’s sustainable development talk by mistake. But she has just started working on an African agricultural investment fund, and found herself riveted.
Bob Johnson, a geneticist from Oxford, gets books signed for his large collection but gives them as presents, too. Jenny Durston from Birmingham, here with her daughter Hayley, has a more pragmatic answer: ‘You’re paying full price so you get the signature. We’d buy on the internet otherwise.â€
And then there’s the political engagement. The queue for Christopher Hitchens has to be moved to an entirely new entrance, it’s so keen and long thanks to people like local accountant Julie Freeman, a committed anti-theist (‘I just think religion is wrongâ€); and Ahsan Akbar, a Muslim who works in the City of London, who appreciates Hitchens’ full-on contrarianism.
Was he persuaded?
‘No. But I like the risks he takes. It takes guts.†He enjoyed being challenged. Which is as good a reason to get a book signed as any. —