It was thanks to a phenomenon lying somewhere between chance and merit that I ended up attending the Frankfurt Book Fair. In mid-June I signed a contract for the publication of my translation of Josef Winkler’s When the Time Comes (this is a plug, but not a shameless one). Shortly thereafter I came to Berlin. Among other things, I had hoped to meet Dr. Petra Hardt, the foreign rights directress from Suhrkamp, who had been far more encouraging than one would expect from a person of her stature when I wrote her spontaneously two years back asking to translate a Büchner Prize-winning house author from one of the world’s most redoubtable publishing houses. At the lunch, attended as well by her charming colleague Nora Mercurio and Rainer J. Hanshe from Contra Mundum Press, I was asked whether I would be going to Frankfurt. Luckily the facial expression corresponding to the thought I’m still deciding is not very different from the one for I wonder what I’m supposed to say. “I’m not sure yet,” I said, playing it cool, and Petra said that if I decided to, I should come to Suhrkamp’s party.
My initial misunderstanding pertained to the capaciousness of the word “fair.” The word in English is so quaint. The Frankfurt Book Fair attracts nearly 300,000 visitors. Somewhere between the populations of Providence and Zurich, in other words. Because my train left later than my publisher’s, I had told him I would see him at the event site. This proposal was almost cute in its naivety. The fair is divided up among eleven halls, the smallest of which could host a decent-sized awards show, while the largest is a bit smaller than an aircraft carrier. All are filled with type-A men and women in suits holding tablets and smartphones running from one stand to the next. Having neither a necktie nor a briefcase nor any other status-conferring accoutrement (unable to connect to the wireless network, my iPhone was like a bitter remnant of my hubris), I felt out of place, and after locating the Spanish book section, where my first meeting was to take place, I returned to my hostel for a nap.
That evening I met with Montserrat Terrones of the Garbuix Agency to talk graphic novels. Montserrat and I had worked together on Antonio Altarriba and Kim’s award-winning graphic novel The Art of Flying, due out in English in 2015 from Jonathan Cape. She must have imagined we would leave tranquilly through the exit by Hall 8, where we would have a quick drink, look over a few books, and say our goodbyes. Sadly, she had not reckoned with my having checked my coat.
I should emphasize that the building or buildings in which the Book Fair is held (it could be anywhere between one and maybe ten) could easily be repurposed as an international airport, and saying “I just need to go get my coat before we leave” is like saying “hold on while I go run a marathon.” We went up and down escalators, I asked for directions several times, and finally we exited into a desolate parking deck from whence we made our way toward a shopping center that bore no conceivable geographic relation to any recognizable landmark in Frankfurt. Meekly, I paid for her latte, as though this were compensation, before watching her set off in what we were told by the not especially trustworthy manager of a baked goods shop were the directions to her lodgings. I was relieved to see her alive the next day.
I returned to the fair on Thursday and Friday. At the Suhrkamp stand, I gawked at the Vorzugsausgabe of Arno Schmidt’s Zettels Traum, a fifteen-pound tome that could double as a dining surface for two. There were police officers everywhere: apparently book theft is common, with the perennial excuse, “I thought they were giving them away.” In the room housing the American publishers, I saw a banner bearing the legend, “Undoubtedly one of the most significant writers of the twentieth century,” or something along those lines; the quote was attributed to Publisher’s Weekly. Naturally it was the stand of Bridge Publications, who disseminate the numerous works of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. For some reason, there was a man there dressed as an American Indian and holding a spear. “Come on, take your picture with him,” said a representative in his thirties with that odd expression, at once dumb, pathetic, and unnerving, that characterizes devotees of the lemon detox diet and followers of Lyndon Larouche.
Much of the fair seems dedicated to figuring out which publishers are giving away free food and alcohol, particularly as the nourishment on public offer is twice as expensive as what one is accustomed to in Germany. There are many panels, book-signings, and other such events; there are also teams of massage therapists. I sat down at one’s request, being told at the beginning that the price was ten euros. The masseuse, rather than kneading the muscle of my trapezii, spent a lot of time squeezing together the two layers of skin that overlay them, producing a burning sensation, so that I felt slightly worse after than before. An odd effect of having acquired my languages in adulthood is the occasional intimation that I am not actually communicating, but only pretending to, and as a consequence, I sometimes repeat questions to which I already know the answer. For this reason, I asked again how much the massages cost, and was informed that ten euros was the minimum recommended donation. I respect the hustle: I gave her fifteen, despite my feeling that, unless pinching therapy suddenly were to come suddenly into fashion, her vocation probably lay elsewhere.
I would advise those who plan on producing signage and other promotional materials in languages not their own to go the extra mile and get a native proofreader. A prestigious literary agency had plastered across the walls of its little tent the mottos: ¿Por qué leer? Warum lesen? Why to read? In the company’s defense, this is peanuts compared to the now infamous phrase of their compatriot Alexander Blanco, Spain’s choice to represent Madrid in its recently failed Olympic bid, who replied to a reporter’s question with the almost koan-like phrase “No listen the ask.”
Friday was the night of the Suhrkamp party. It is held in the home of the legendary publisher Siegfried Unseld, who worked with many of the greatest writers of the twentieth century and whose tact, intelligence, and above all patience are familiar to anyone who has read his correspondence with the far from accommodating Thomas Bernhard. The house contains Unseld’s library, a framed typescript of a poem in German by John Cage, photos of Unseld with Beckett, Cioran, and others. There were said to be numerous notables in attendance, but as I know only the faces of celebrities who have been involved in sex scandals, I recognized no one. A friend of mine did say hello to Roberto Calasso.
I left with two publishers and two translators in a taxi to go to a party in a strangely lit building with enormous columns where we drank gin and apple soda, which the woman who served us pretended to believe was a legitimate cocktail. Afterwards someone said we should go to a party held by a group of Russian publishers at the Frankfurter Hof, a very luxurious U-shaped hotel with Ionic columns and stone statues of muscular men bowing between the balconies. There were very few Russians in the ballroom but there was a great deal of food in chafing dishes and bottles of cheap Rioja wine and vodka of doubtful provenance and I indulged past excess in all three. As a consequence, I have few memories of the latter part of the evening, and several that I do possess have turned out, upon interviewing the people I was with, not to be true.
The morning after, I arrived at the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof only to find that my train was leaving from the Südbahnhof. I changed my ticket so that I might depart from the station I was actually in. My train was oversold, and dozens of people crowded in the aisles and on the floor until it was announced there was a mechanical problem and no one knew when we would leave; as a consequence, some tried their luck with another train, also oversold, and I was able to sit down and fall asleep.
Image “Wellness 2012: Massage in hall 4.2” © Frankfurt Book Fair, 2012