The Guardian’s Sam Jordison visits a historic lit site and wonders what happened to the gatherings of young writers in places they could afford?

As a literary junkie, I’m all for these places, but when indulging myself in melancholy philosophising I come to see them as rather vain attempts to preserve, as if in amber, an activity that is entirely ephemeral. The activity of writing can’t be recreated once its practitioners have shuffled off their mortal coils, after all.

So I left Rye feeling slightly glum. As I’ve noted, I’m not really sure what else I could have expected. I’m also aware that it’s daft to hope for any physical manifestation of a profession that it is largely carried out in the abstract. What’s more, for all I know, and for all that such a brief visit could tell me, there might actually be all manner of creative activity going on behind the (studiously old-fashioned) closed doors of the town.

Even so, I doubt it. Not least because the place is so damn expensive nowadays. The Bright Young Things themselves would be hard pushed to afford a hotel room (I stayed in the far cheaper Hastings, down the coast) while the astonishing property prices must exclude all but the commuting classes.

Sam, here’s my guess: they now live where ever is cheapest and meet online… Here, for instance, at Bookninja. Identity — national, racial, religious, gender — goes with them  no matter where they travel/reside because they just have to plug their same old wires into new walls to get online. In this way, we’re all expat exiles in foreign lands, but also nurturing ideas and trends right at home. Ta da! NeoBoho2.0!