At last, the words are on the streets

IS the book dead?" is the question on the lips of every modern-day literary Jeremiah, seriously disturbed by "sombre warnings" that the Internet will kill our literary culture and shorten our attention spans. Hullo, anyone still there?

Does this mean novelists like myself will be exiled to some kind of cybe-ria, where we are still apparently connected to the world, even though we are sitting indoors in front of our screens, alone, and wearing our pants on our heads.

Actually, the book is more than alive and well. It is positively yodelling with rude health. Not only are our high streets and malls alive with the sound of Waterstone's tills ringing up a storm, venues all over London are busting with an eclectic programme of readings, talks and discussions. To list just a few current delights, the South Bank is hosting a packed season of talks, including Maya Jaggi, Timothy Garton Ash and Stephen Bayley. You can see Daniel Libeskind being grilled at the Architectural Association, listen to Marina Warner interviewing artist Marlene Dumas at Delfina, hear biographer Hilary Spurling at the Royal Society of Literature, or, indeed, catch Germaine Greer almost anywhere. As if this wasn't enough to be getting on with, The Word, London's first international festival of literature, beginning this Friday, offers a starry roundup of acclaimed African and Caribbean writers, including Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka and Derek Walcott. This explosion of cultural diversity is exactly what should be going on in a large cosmopolitan city. But why is it that audiences are increasingly flocking to events in which writers read and discuss their work? Surely the good thing about a book is that we can read it alone, without having its meanings mediated to us via the author's tone of voice in a room full of other people? Why would we want to traipse all the way to Croydon to hear Joseph Heller read from his autobiography when we can read it on a beach? The reasons for the popularity of these events are probably very ancient, and perhaps unfashionable. In a country which is supposed to have no philosophers, to disdain them even, I believe we want to know more about how we might (or might not) live our lives. What's more, if a writer manages really to take hold of our imagination in the very particular way that a writer sometimes can, we imagine that we will enjoy their company because we enjoy the way they think. Except, sometimes, to our consternation we discover that if they knocked on our front door, we'd call the police. The first time I ever went out of my way to hear a writer read from his work was when I went to see the American beat poet, Allen Ginsberg, perform his poetry in a freezing church hall in Plymouth. I had read Howl and Kaddish, and was a number one fan. What was so exciting about this event was Ginsberg's presence in damp, dreary Devon. Just seeing him walk on stage seemed to link me to a bigger world. And then, of course, as a young woman who wanted to be a writer, I was fascinated by the way he chanted long, clunky sentences that seemed to go on forever without a full stop. Ginsberg's evocation of language could turn his audience's guts inside out the way great opera singers and rock stars can, and I wondered if I could ever be as uninhibited and expressive as he was. I recognised there were influences that I shared with him, even though we were of completely different generations William Blake, Jean Genet, Walt Whitman, Djuna Barnes - and as corny as it sounds, that night in a church hall in Plymouth, I felt less lonely. For more frivolous reasons, when I went to see Angela Carter read from Nights at the Circus at the Poetry Society, I mostly wanted to see what she looked like. Would she "be" the same as her writing - that is to say, rather decadent, arch and wry? How would she speak? I was, after all, in love with her work; this was the awesome writer who imagined the mistress of Baudelaire as being "like a piano in a country where everyone has had their hands cut off". To this day, I remember the strange way her lips moved, like sea anemones, and her flirtatious way of answering questions. Now that both she and Ginsberg have died, I am surprised at how often I play back my memories of these two readings; it's a little like having my own personal home movie, all shot from my point of view. Forever archived in my mind is a particular gesture, a burst of laughter shared with the audience, an unexpected rage. And, of course, these writers live on for me through their writing despite sombre warnings that the Internet, like a malevolent fairy scared of the future, will kiss the book to sleep. lThe Word, The London Festival of Literature, runs from 19 to 28 March at venues all over London. For more information, telephone 0171 837 2555, or look up www.theword.org.uk

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