Literature Festivals, anyone?

F

Flower

Reader
Bjorn said:
And I'm going to be there from Wednesday through Sunday. My feet are already pre-emptively killing me. :( But there's some really interesting stuff going on this year... really looking forward to Ngugi wa Thiong'o's seminar on language and power, for instance.
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I have just glanced at the programme for the festival. It sounds great to have a theme for the fair. Do they always have that, Bjorn?

Bok & Bibliotek ? Bok och bibliotek i Norden AB
 
H

hdw

Reader
Eric said:
As for Harry's mention of the limp-wristed Andrew Bowell-Motion, to give him his full name, I've always regarded him as a macho smoothie who attempts to chaperone the girls on the corridors of academe to a protectively dark corner. Why does everyone make fun of the former Port Laureate?
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Motion is an old surname among the fishing population in my native corner of east Fife. In our local parish records it occurs at least once as "Motion alias Mosheim", which looks Norwegian. I once read an interview with Motion where he was asked about his surname and replied - correctly - that it occurs on several old headstones in the graveyard of the now ruined St. Andrews Cathedral, which is nine miles from my native village. So he has a potential Scottish connection, despite his soft southern Sassenach simpering.

Harry
 
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Eric

Former Member
I do, to an extent, regret not going down to the Gothenburg Book Fair myself this year. But I can't really afford it as I am not part of any money-generating machine that will pay my hotel bills, etc. Besides, I have to become more aware of what's worthwhile on the Swedish and Scandinavian literary scene. But I may very well attend next year.

You have to plan well beforehand, otherwise you can get book fair burn-out and spend your time sitting in a pub far from the venue and taking walks in the fresh air (Gothenburg is an attractive city). So unless you have a stand of your own for your publishing house, a book fair involves a lot of trudging about and picking up visiting cards and leaflets to put into an increasingly heavy bag. And chatting to people who have another 25 to get through the same day so that by six o'clock the meetings merge in their minds.

The big advantage is that you meet some of these people eye-to-eye instead of only email-to-email. They might even remember you. Translators especially need to remind publishers that they exist.

But a book fair is, in theory, different to a book festival. The former is very much a buying-and-selling enterprise, with seminars and talks attached; whereas a book festival, in theory at least, is more of a book-examining and book-reading event. But I'm sure that the distinctions are blurred a lot in real life.

One thing that looks interesting at Gothenburg is the fact that several author's societies (litter?ra s?llskap) have stands there. So if you're interested in a particular author, you can join the society and attend regular meetings, assuming you live within hailing distance of the regular venue.

They do try to cram in an awful lot. For instance, when speakers only have 15 minutes to say their piece, and as we all know, modern man (and woman) cannot keep to the clock, so there will be a number of disappointed people. In my opinion, you need at least 25 minutes, plus five for questions, to do justice to any subject. Otherwise it becomes a matter of going through the motions (pace Andrew). And parallel sessions means that it looks good on paper, but in real life you have to miss a great deal.
 
F

Flower

Reader
hdw said:
I have an inbuilt horror of poetry-readings - the epitome of tweeness - and avoid them like the plague. It was different in the good old Dark Ages, when only priests and monks could read, so while you were getting sozzled in the ale-hall it was good fun to have the bard reciting Beowulf to you. My favourite word in the whole of Beowulf is the first one, HWAET!! - i.e. shut up and pin your ears back, I'm going to read my pome. If you don't belt up you'll get my axe in your nut. Poets were warriors in those days, not limp-wristed Andrew Motions.

On Sunday afternoon when I'm getting tea ready I usually hear at least a part of Radio Four's "Poetry Please", and it's dire when they have an ac-tor giving a heartfelt rendering in act-orish RP of somebody's innocent little verses, written in the privacy of their study and meant to be read in similar circumstances by the eventual reader, not orated in best Royal Shakespeare Company style over the airwaves.

Harry
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Im actually sitting listening to Radio four now..."Poetry Please" :) and see that the litterary hour begins with "Open book". I might give it a go on sunday if I have the time and remember to turn it on.
 
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Eric

Former Member
I am on the same wavelength as Harry (#11) with regard to poetry readings. A few centuries after the Jesus Episode, the good Saint Augustine was probably, in good old Roman Empire wise ("vis" p? skandinaviska), reading aloud from his scrolls. Yet as Harry suggests, even the noisy Dark Ages (pace DWM; not only in Sweden) are pass?.

Once Trakl and Hopkins, Mandelstam and Swinburne, Thomas and Staff had come along, I think that the average educated European over the age of five had actually learnt to read silently.

So, while I have nothing against drinking beer, and like, in moderation, to wander round the stands at book fairs, I have a horror of pompous poets or other readers-aloud-with-egos declaiming in a histrionic manner, whilst the inadequately pissed public shuffles past in thirsty indifference. It is so embarrassing, so silly, so infradig. So rhetorical.

I like John Cage's discreet radio programme "Poetry - no thank-you" which consists of 27.386 (recurring) minutes each week of non-poetic silence. (I also like jokes that are as subtle as a blow on the head with a sledgehammer.)
 
H

hdw

Reader
Eric said:
I like John Cage's discreet radio programme "Poetry - no thank-you" which consists of 27.386 (recurring) minutes each week of non-poetic silence. (I also like jokes that are as subtle as a blow on the head with a sledgehammer.)
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For a composer, Cage is unusually fond of silence, e.g. the famous (notorious?) 4'33", where for 4 minutes and 33 seconds a pianist sits at the piano and does ... nothing. I believe there is a Facebook campaign to make 4'33" top of the pops this Christmas, and one of the campaigners claims to have it as the ring-tone on his mobile phone.

Harry
 
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Eric

Former Member
As someone who does not possess an automobile, I go into the centre of town by bus. So I hope that there is a sudden craze here of using 4.33 as the warning tone. Otherwise the usual sound plague will continue, whereby within 4.33 seconds of hearing the jingle, someone will answer his friend sitting in the bath at home with the surprise comment that: "I am on the bus". In some languages, that would be a genuine surprise, as it would imply his perching precariously on the roof of the swerving vehicle.
 
Bjorn

Bjorn

Reader
There is nothing like five days at a book fair to make every part of your physique hurt like hell. And that includes my wallet. But hey, I got to see some really good authors, got to talk to a lot of people, plus drink a lot and call it work. So I'm happy with this year's Gothenburg fair.
 
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Eric

Former Member
Thanks for that, Johan (and Bj?rn). If that's the same Peter Englund who runs the Nobel Show up in faraway Stockholm, he is certainly being quite irreverent. But it also takes away some of the slight regret I had at not going to Yerterborry myself. (They should spell it that ways so English-speakers say it right.)

I've been to the London Book Fair twice in the last few years and this seems much of the same, judging by what Englund says. Unless you've a lot of appointments with publishers and promotional bodies, the synchronicity of your hunger & thirst with the desire to get as many free pamphlets and brochures as possible soon wears you out. But it must be infinitely worse for him, as everyone will, overtly or coverly, be trying to screw the secret of the Nobel out of him.

So I'm going to do my bit for literature by reading and translating books. I won't shun book fairs out of bloody-mindedness, but I don't want to go to too many, and pay for expensive travel and hotels just to get a few free publications and glasses of wine, and listen to a few talks - some of which are even interesting. Nobody pays my expenses.

We people who work in the "culture industry" as it is so horribly called, must go and hobnob with the great and the good at book fairs now and again. But most of our valuable work is done at a computer, in an office or at home, plus one-to-one meetings with publishers or agency people.

*

Right now, I shall compensate for not going to the book fair by reading an article in what was still 00-tal by one Sverker Tir?n about Kritikfabriker (Critic Factories). I like the critical spirit of the magazine that has now become 10-tal, changing its name with the decade. This article deals with whether and how culture critics are taught, either within the subject of journalism, or the subject of literary and other cultural studies. Because it is interesting to know something about how people are trained (or not!) to become cultural journalists. Most of us read loads of reviews and criticism in various publications to help us choose what literature to read.

And if you want to discuss such matters with others, I think a quiet talk in the pub with one or two people can be of more value than walking around a huge hangar full of culture once a year.
 
H

hdw

Reader
Eric said:
Thanks for that, Johan (and Bj?rn). If that's the same Peter Englund who runs the Nobel Show up in faraway Stockholm, he is certainly being quite irreverent. But it also takes away some of the slight regret I had at not going to Yerterborry myself. (They should spell it that ways so English-speakers say it right.)

I've been to the London Book Fair twice in the last few years and this seems much of the same, judging by what Englund says. Unless you've a lot of appointments with publishers and promotional bodies, the synchronicity of your hunger & thirst with the desire to get as many free pamphlets and brochures as possible soon wears you out. But it must be infinitely worse for him, as everyone will, overtly or coverly, be trying to screw the secret of the Nobel out of him.

So I'm going to do my bit for literature by reading and translating books. I won't shun book fairs out of bloody-mindedness, but I don't want to go to too many, and pay for expensive travel and hotels just to get a few free publications and glasses of wine, and listen to a few talks - some of which are even interesting. Nobody pays my expenses.

We people who work in the "culture industry" as it is so horribly called, must go and hobnob with the great and the good at book fairs now and again. But most of our valuable work is done at a computer, in an office or at home, plus one-to-one meetings with publishers or agency people.

*

Right now, I shall compensate for not going to the book fair by reading an article in what was still 00-tal by one Sverker Tir?n about Kritikfabriker (Critic Factories). I like the critical spirit of the magazine that has now become 10-tal, changing its name with the decade. This article deals with whether and how culture critics are taught, either within the subject of journalism, or the subject of literary and other cultural studies. Because it is interesting to know something about how people are trained (or not!) to become cultural journalists. Most of us read loads of reviews and criticism in various publications to help us choose what literature to read.

And if you want to discuss such matters with others, I think a quiet talk in the pub with one or two people can be of more value than walking around a huge hangar full of culture once a year.
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Peter Englund's Poltava is a great read. I checked his Wiki entry just now, and I see that he "studied caretaking for two years". I wonder if you can take a Ph.D. in it? You could always make it sound posher and more academic by calling it conciergerie.

I always thought G?teborg was pronounced Gothenburg by sensible people. Pity that foreigners can't even pronounce their own placenames properly.

I used to get commissions from 90-tal and 00-tal, but haven't had an approach from them for some time. I was never very impressed by the literary quality of the texts they sent me to translate.

Harry
 
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