Picture: Frankfurt Book Fair
- So here you go, Day Two, a day late, and strictly speaking Day One anyway. No, I’m not having a laugh at your expense, but I do think such discombobulation is kind of apt, because it gives you a sense of the topsy-turvyness to be felt in Frankfurt and indeed Germany this week. It’s like being in one of those alternative-history novels - Fatherland, say – where Germany won World War II (oops, I’ve mentioned the war). In this case, we’re in a parallel universe where New Zealand is at the heart of European culture – where less than a hundred metres from the Stadel Museum you can find an Alistair Te Ariki Campbell poem carved into the pavement; where when you’re waiting for an S-Bahn train there are posters for Bill Manhire, Norman Meehan and Hannah Griffin’s Making Baby Float concerts; where you open your morning newspaper and find a profile of Carl Nixon. You could get used to this; you probably shouldn’t. But it’s nice while it lasts.
- For myself, I could also get used to the German habit of having an actor at author events to read translations of any foreign language writing (and even sometimes German language writing, apparently). It has long been my belief that authors are the worst readers of their own work, and to hear Paula Morris’s Rangatira and Sarah Quigley’s The Conductor brought to life by actor Thomas Sarbacher in the Frankfurt central library, even without understanding a word of German, was such a treat I can’t help but think actors should be employed for all future readings involving New Zealand authors. Possibly even actors reading in German – is there poetry or prose anywhere that wouldn’t sound better in German?
- The German habit I could never get used to is just how long the readings last. In New Zealand, audiences start to twitch after five minutes, their patience running out after 10 minutes; in Germany, readings of 40 minutes are not uncommon, and I’ve already sat through many of 20 minutes. At the Morris and Quigley event, I was more than sated by the 15 minutes apiece when the moderator announced it was time for second readings (of another 15 minutes apiece). Under the circumstances, I had to admire the stamina of the two homeless men who’d wandered in and persisted in making mischief throughout the 90-minute event. I think I’d have been off – of my own volition rather than because of a security guard – much sooner.
- The cultural seriousness of which such readings are indicative is further reflected in the German newspapers – broadsheet and bulky and full of lengthy articles. How frustrating it is to find such a serious newspaper culture and not have the language to enjoy it.
- Yesterday, the papers were also full of New Zealanders and the opening of the New Zealand pavilion. You will find below photographs of some of the articles. A great utilisation of Joe Harawira in warrior mode in leading newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine’s Zeitung zur Buchmesse supplement cover story. The same paper’s review of the pavilion, by the way, was positive – but did diss the beer being served as malty and thin. The nerve. But how German to review the beer in the first place.
- Concerns about sound leaking from one side of the pavilion curtain to the other have proven well-founded (from the chorus of whispering voices and singing in the film about New Zealand literature to the rain-like downpours of water into one of the pavilion’s nearby lakes). It’s probably more offputting for those on stage and right next to the curtain than for those of us in the audience, though. “Can you hear that noise?” asked Lloyd Jones during his afternoon session with Emily Perkins. “It’s very realistic. It’s like being in a high street. It’s very clever.” Even Perkins was taken aback during this session when moderator Christoph Mucher, former director of the Goethe-Institut New Zealand, asked why she had written such a conventional book as The Forrests after the more experimental Novel About My Wife. She – like the rest of us – thought it had been the other way round. Asked to recommend other New Zealand writers exploring innovative narrative techniques, Perkins opted for The Broken Book by Fiona Farrell and The Invisible Rider by Kirsten McDougall, while Jones chose Wulf by Hamish Clayton.
- In the session that followed, Bill Manhire was brought together with Halldor Guomundsson from last year’s guest of honour country under the cheeky title New Zealand – Iceland with Trees? A cheeky presenter, too, the book fair’s decidedly dapper Thomas Bohm. Why dapper? Checked jacket and shirt, orange waistcoat and the dinkiest of bow ties – that’s why dapper. It’s a look I am thinking of adopting. Asked to account for so much creativity in such a small country (Iceland’s population is less than 320,000), Guomundsson said: “An Icelandic musician was once asked why people like Bjork have made it. Why does Bjork come from Reykjavik, why does Sigur Ros come from Reykjavik? And he said it’s because when you’re writing commercial music in Iceland it doesn’t have a point. Because the market is so small you’ll never get rich. So why not just do what you like? And I think it’s like [Manhire] was saying in an interview about the poet being free of the market. I think it’s really important because money affects literature in the same way as money affects sex. Not in a good way.”
- During her multi-media and indeed multi-Annabel Langbeined event afterward, with images of her appearing on screens throughout the pavilion, the domestic goddess (or is that the other one?) revealed that while she’d sourced most of the products she was using locally, the miniature bottle of olive oil was one she’d nabbed from her Air New Zealand flight. I don’t know about you, but I have never been offered a miniature bottle of olive oil when flying Air New Zealand. I suspect Langbein might be flying in a different class to you and me.
- In his opening ceremony speech earlier in the week, Gottfried Honnefelder, president of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association, emphasised the importance of the fixed net price system that had served the broad eco-system of German writing, publishing and bookselling so well. When, during an interview afterwards, I asked Culture and Heritage Minister Christopher Finlayson if he were inspired to champion the reintroduction of such a system in New Zealand, I think we must have been at cross-purposes, because he started talking about GST, and in any case passed the buck, saying: “You talk to the Finance Minister about those matters.” However, judging from this blog by Booksellers New Zealand chief executive Lincoln Gould, the matter was at least discussed later. Gould has his own wires crossed about who made the speech – I don’t think I have – but in any case the pertinent sentence is this one: ”At least one other New Zealand delegate present from the academic sector said he felt this issue could well be taken up here and the suggestion became a talking point among New Zealanders, including Deputy Prime Minister Bill English.” You know, Bill English – also the Finance Minister. (Although for some reason the fair programme has him as Simon William English.)
- Next year’s guest of honour at the fair is going to be Brazil. At the risk of being disloyal, I have been finding it increasingly difficult to resist their daily close-of-day Caipirinha Hour. No offence to our own pavilion’s happy hour kapa haka group Te Materae | Orehu, who are doing a great job, I’m sure. But nothing does the job quite like a sundowner caipirinha.
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