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Yours truly is thoroughly exhausted, mostly in a good way. One of the reasons why I never miss a Frankfurt Book Fair in its entirety (i.e. the entire week, not just one or two days) is that you really don't get that many books on one spot anywhere in the world. This year: more than 400 000 books from more than 100 countries, of which 124 00 books are new publications. I like to have enough time to actually browse through some of them instead of running from hall to hall, hence one week.
This year, I also dropped by the antiquary part of the fair, where Dutch author Cees Noteboom gave the opening speech. I hadn't come for the speech (yesterday was quite enough until Sunday and the Friedenspreis), but for a Kästner volume and a chat with one of the bookstore owners, but I stuck around to listen. Noteboom was entertaining as always, if occasionally sexist. (Quoting a bookstore owner on how women hate it if their men collect books because women can't understand why one would want to - oh really?) His piece de resistance was the story how he had Umberto Eco as a visitor and went book shopping with him through the old book stores of Amsterdam. The owner of one shop was alarmed by Eco, who true to national cliché got louder and louder in his enthusiasm. Noteboom said something on the lines as not to worry, this was famous author Umberto Eco. "Bah," said the bookstore owner, "new books." Then he observed how Umberto Eco took book after book from the shelves and piled them in his arms, wandering to and thro without putting the volumes he had taken earlier back. The bookstore owner grew even more alarmed and asked Noteboom to tell his friend to put the books back before taking out new ones, please. Whereupon Umberto Eco added yet one more to the collection, then balanced all six or so of them, took them to the bookstore owner's desk, put them down and said in English: "You are an old Jew from Amsterdam. I am an Italian from Alessandria. How much?" And after some bargaining bought them all. "Ever since I always get told when new rarities arrive and get treated exceptionally well when I visit that store," added Noteboom.
Befitting this year's theme, there were notably more Chinese books in many a publisher's offering, though occasionally you also had a sign like the one from S. Fischer saying "we regret that our author Liao Yiwu was not allowed to leave the country in order to visit the fair". (Liao Yiwu wrote an article in today's Süddeutsche about this, if you can read German. He has written one of the most lauded publications (in our papers) of the fair, Fräulein Hallo und der Bauernkaiser (undoubtedly it's called something else in the English translation, but I have no idea what), a series of portraits based on interviews; he's also been to prison repeatedly for this volume. I visited the guest of honour hall in the Forum, i.e. the China exhibition, where of course only authors who were allowed to travel are mentioned. However, it's undeniably worth visiting and not just an exercise in state propaganda, as the majority is devoted to the history of Chinese printing, which is indeed awesome and fascinating. The entire room is designed to graphically present "the four elements holding Chinese culture together - paper, a drop of ink, a pictogramm and a book" - the bit of paper makes for the ceiling, the drop of ink is projected via video, and the letter consists of over a thousand different pictogramms growing up from the floor. The displays under glass show replicas of 3500 years old oracle bones with signs carved on them, then written scrolls, then scrolls printed - the diamond sutra - and a replica of the huge, huge printing blocks used to print them with, around 800 AD, several stages in between until early in the 11th century you get mobile letters. The examples of printing in China include also something created by an Italian, the Jesuit Matteo Ricci, who wrote several books in Mandarin and as we could see in the displays created the first map showing the entire globe printed in China. Aside from the beautiful aesthetics I was fascinated to see that he put the Americas on the right side and Asia on the left, i.e. the reverse of what is usual for (European) maps. (We put the Americas on the left side and Asia on the right, which makes Europe right-to-center; of course, when I visited the US for the first time at age 14 I could see they do it differently.) There were less displays devoted to the invention of paper, but there was one authentic relic fragments of millennia old hemp paper.
After leaving the guest of honour hall, I came about an hour too late to catch the pre-premiere, so to speak, of the new film based on my favourite novel by Heinrich Mann, Henri Quatre. (It's going to start in March 2010 in Germany.) Pity, but then I hadn't known they'd show it. On the other hand, it meant I wandered back to halls 3 and 4 where all the German new publications are (I'll check the English ones tomorrow or Friday) and that meant I came across an author talk which turned out to be fascinating, by Julia Voss, a young writer who has written a book about Michael Ende's Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer. One of our most beloved children's books, first published in 1960. (If you don't know it, you might now The Never-Ending Story or Momo by the same author, written later. And filmed none too well, but that's another story, as M.E. would have said.) I'm pretty familiar with it but what she found out had never occured to me, though listening to her make her case, it made complete sense. Especially for a book published in 1960, by an author who was a child during the Third Reich and really really hated school there. (Ende was lucky in that his parents weren't just artists but firmly anti-Nazi, which meant he had support at home. But school was as school was back then, ideological as hell.) She pointed out the entrance sign to Kummerland ("country of sadness", if you translate it literally) stating "only pure-raced dragons allowed, on punishment of death" - and the phrase "reinrassig" would have an obvious resonance in 1960 - the black smoke "like from ovens" rising over Kummerland, the school led by the dragon Frau Mahlzahn who terrorizes her students and makes them accept obvious falsehoods as true. The bullied half-dragon Hieronymus. ZOMG, thought I, she's right, and I never saw it. Michael Ende wrote an allegory of the then recent past into an incredibly popular kid's novel. (With, btw, a black boy as a hero.) "But," said the moderator interviewing Julia Voss, "Frau Mahlzahn is defeated yet not killed. Instead, she goes through a skinning and a metamorphosis and emerges as a reformed, peaceful dragon of wisdom. How does that fit?" "Reeducation, of course," she replied.
And on that note, I conclude my report of this day's highlights.
This year, I also dropped by the antiquary part of the fair, where Dutch author Cees Noteboom gave the opening speech. I hadn't come for the speech (yesterday was quite enough until Sunday and the Friedenspreis), but for a Kästner volume and a chat with one of the bookstore owners, but I stuck around to listen. Noteboom was entertaining as always, if occasionally sexist. (Quoting a bookstore owner on how women hate it if their men collect books because women can't understand why one would want to - oh really?) His piece de resistance was the story how he had Umberto Eco as a visitor and went book shopping with him through the old book stores of Amsterdam. The owner of one shop was alarmed by Eco, who true to national cliché got louder and louder in his enthusiasm. Noteboom said something on the lines as not to worry, this was famous author Umberto Eco. "Bah," said the bookstore owner, "new books." Then he observed how Umberto Eco took book after book from the shelves and piled them in his arms, wandering to and thro without putting the volumes he had taken earlier back. The bookstore owner grew even more alarmed and asked Noteboom to tell his friend to put the books back before taking out new ones, please. Whereupon Umberto Eco added yet one more to the collection, then balanced all six or so of them, took them to the bookstore owner's desk, put them down and said in English: "You are an old Jew from Amsterdam. I am an Italian from Alessandria. How much?" And after some bargaining bought them all. "Ever since I always get told when new rarities arrive and get treated exceptionally well when I visit that store," added Noteboom.
Befitting this year's theme, there were notably more Chinese books in many a publisher's offering, though occasionally you also had a sign like the one from S. Fischer saying "we regret that our author Liao Yiwu was not allowed to leave the country in order to visit the fair". (Liao Yiwu wrote an article in today's Süddeutsche about this, if you can read German. He has written one of the most lauded publications (in our papers) of the fair, Fräulein Hallo und der Bauernkaiser (undoubtedly it's called something else in the English translation, but I have no idea what), a series of portraits based on interviews; he's also been to prison repeatedly for this volume. I visited the guest of honour hall in the Forum, i.e. the China exhibition, where of course only authors who were allowed to travel are mentioned. However, it's undeniably worth visiting and not just an exercise in state propaganda, as the majority is devoted to the history of Chinese printing, which is indeed awesome and fascinating. The entire room is designed to graphically present "the four elements holding Chinese culture together - paper, a drop of ink, a pictogramm and a book" - the bit of paper makes for the ceiling, the drop of ink is projected via video, and the letter consists of over a thousand different pictogramms growing up from the floor. The displays under glass show replicas of 3500 years old oracle bones with signs carved on them, then written scrolls, then scrolls printed - the diamond sutra - and a replica of the huge, huge printing blocks used to print them with, around 800 AD, several stages in between until early in the 11th century you get mobile letters. The examples of printing in China include also something created by an Italian, the Jesuit Matteo Ricci, who wrote several books in Mandarin and as we could see in the displays created the first map showing the entire globe printed in China. Aside from the beautiful aesthetics I was fascinated to see that he put the Americas on the right side and Asia on the left, i.e. the reverse of what is usual for (European) maps. (We put the Americas on the left side and Asia on the right, which makes Europe right-to-center; of course, when I visited the US for the first time at age 14 I could see they do it differently.) There were less displays devoted to the invention of paper, but there was one authentic relic fragments of millennia old hemp paper.
After leaving the guest of honour hall, I came about an hour too late to catch the pre-premiere, so to speak, of the new film based on my favourite novel by Heinrich Mann, Henri Quatre. (It's going to start in March 2010 in Germany.) Pity, but then I hadn't known they'd show it. On the other hand, it meant I wandered back to halls 3 and 4 where all the German new publications are (I'll check the English ones tomorrow or Friday) and that meant I came across an author talk which turned out to be fascinating, by Julia Voss, a young writer who has written a book about Michael Ende's Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer. One of our most beloved children's books, first published in 1960. (If you don't know it, you might now The Never-Ending Story or Momo by the same author, written later. And filmed none too well, but that's another story, as M.E. would have said.) I'm pretty familiar with it but what she found out had never occured to me, though listening to her make her case, it made complete sense. Especially for a book published in 1960, by an author who was a child during the Third Reich and really really hated school there. (Ende was lucky in that his parents weren't just artists but firmly anti-Nazi, which meant he had support at home. But school was as school was back then, ideological as hell.) She pointed out the entrance sign to Kummerland ("country of sadness", if you translate it literally) stating "only pure-raced dragons allowed, on punishment of death" - and the phrase "reinrassig" would have an obvious resonance in 1960 - the black smoke "like from ovens" rising over Kummerland, the school led by the dragon Frau Mahlzahn who terrorizes her students and makes them accept obvious falsehoods as true. The bullied half-dragon Hieronymus. ZOMG, thought I, she's right, and I never saw it. Michael Ende wrote an allegory of the then recent past into an incredibly popular kid's novel. (With, btw, a black boy as a hero.) "But," said the moderator interviewing Julia Voss, "Frau Mahlzahn is defeated yet not killed. Instead, she goes through a skinning and a metamorphosis and emerges as a reformed, peaceful dragon of wisdom. How does that fit?" "Reeducation, of course," she replied.
And on that note, I conclude my report of this day's highlights.
