Day Two at the Frankfurt Book Fair was the day of the memoirs; among others, those of Malala which were published simultanously in a couple of languages. Now since she's nominated for the Nobel Peace Award, her German publisher, while not considering it likely she wins, still is fretting because she's currently doing book signings in the US, and IF she gets the Nobel, the news will reach her... in Washington, DC. Which, quoth the publisher, considering that the girl is already the target of conspiracy theories (she never was shot! she's a CIA stooge! etc.) will make it even worse. When on Friday later morning it turned out Malala HADN'T won, he was half glum, half relieved about it.
Meanwhile, Fischer who publishes Alice Munro in German is mightily pleased. So are her own publishers of course; I had a quick glimpse at hall 8, which is where the English-speaking publishers are camping out, though what I have to admit I browsed through most was the comic book/graphic novel "The Fifth Beatle", about Brian Epstein. In which the author goes for a poetic approach, and so does his artist; when Brian meets Elvis' manager, Colonel Parker, on that one and only occasion the Beatles met Elvis, Parker is drawn with demonic red eyes, no less. You know, the cliché of the Bad Manager, controlling and exploiting his artist and the counterpart to Brian's Good Manager (giving all for his artists and loving them). Which I would ridicule, except, um, according to all we can now, it was true? Still think the red eyes are a bit over the top.
Also red: the hair of the girl who is Brian's Head!Six, named "Moxie", symbolizing his ambition and giving him someone to share his thoughts and doubts with, conveniently allowing the reader to do the same. Why Brian has a Head!Moxie is unclear to me but then I only browsed through the pages and maybe a thorough reading will reveal all. (I hasten to add Head!Moxie doesn't mean Brian's homosexuality is ignored or changed, absolutely not. I dare say, though, you could have had Brian monologuing or dialoguieng with, say, several of his pals like Nate Weiss or employes/friends/occasional lovers like Peter Brown and get the exposition across that way.) The comics' stand on the "did they or didn't they?" Barcelona question: there was UST but no they didn't, because John chickened out after first getting Brian to admit he was interested.
The Beatles in general, when they show up (which they don't do too often; as it should be, the focus is on Brian's story) talk in A-Hard-Day's-Night-ese, which, fair enough. (Except for John's solo scenes with Brian; he then talks in quotes from the 1980 Playboy Interview.) Since the comic goes for magical realism, we get a dreaming-into-his-death Brian having goodbye type vonversations which culminate in him having one with ghostly Paul on the note of "it's on your shoulders now, we both know John can't be arsed to work if one doesn't drive him, pray keep the group together, you have the savvy, the work ethics and the drive, but I know I'm also dooming your friendships with that, sorry", which I found somewhere between touching and wistfully amusing, considering one of John's often voiced complaints in ye days of musical feuding was that "Paul behaved as if Brian had died with the worlds "let's make a new album, boys" on his lips". So the author actually letting Brian die with, etc, is among other things black humour and reconcilatory gesture.
Art: Brian, alas, is rarely recognisable on first browsing, and none of the women are (Cynthia Lennon looks like Generic Comic Book Blonde, for example), but on the other hand if you don't look for actual similarities the art goes well with the storymood. (For example, for the whole Manila episode, when things went truly insane, one of the most nightmarish experiences for Brian Epstein and a pretty bad one for the Beatles, it gets more and more abstract and cartoonish to go with Brian's state of mind.) And there are some neat nods to things that don't play a role in this particular story but were long term wise important; at the Sgt. Pepper launching party in Brian's house, there is only one female photographer, blonde. (As indeed there was. This was Linda Eastman, the future Mrs. McCartney.) She isn't adressed by name but I thought it showed both writer and artist did their research.
Non comic books which caught my eye and which I want to read at my leisure outside of the hectic book fair atmosphere: "The Golem and the Djinn" by Helene Weckman and "Abschied von Sansibar", "Farewell to Sansibar" by Lukas Hartmann. I had "met" one of the later's historical main characters as a minor character in a novel by M.M. Kaye many years before, "Trade Winds", so I was aware she had really lived: Salmé bint Said aka Emily Ruete, daughter of the Sultan of Sansibar who'd run away with a Hamburg merchant and married him. That much I knew, but not what had become of Salmé/Emily afterwards and her and her children's story is what this novel tells. She had three children (four actually, the first one died as a baby), and then lost her husband, which meant she was stuck in strange Germany with three children to bring up and an absolutely unforgiving brother on the throne back home in Sansibar who did not want to reconcile, let alone support her. Bismarck used the threat of making her son Sultan as part of his strategy to get a treaty out of her brother that would allow Germany to annex Sansibar after said brother's death, then once that was accomplished dropped her like a hot potato. She ended up living in Beirut for a while (which, as the author said at the book fair presentation, is in the exact geographich middle between Hamburg and Sansibar), but was not allowed to see her home again. Her half Arab, half German children, two daughters and a son, had remarkable fates as well. One married a hardcore Nazi, one, the son, a Jewish merchant's daughter which was why he emigrated. He'd gone from officer to pacifist in WWI already, and then took up the already Don Quichotte like cause of mediating between Zionists and Arabs in Palestine. The novel isn't chronological - we start with the son near his death and only near the end get the story of how young Salmé fell in love with her German in the first place - and going by my hasty browsing well written. There are excerpts interspersed from a letter the real Salmé/Emily wrote to her brother Bargash, the Sultan of Sansibar, in vain pleading with him. According to Mr. Hartman, Salmé in addition to writing her memoirs (which were a bestseller and how she supported herself & the kids for a while", "Memoirs of an Arabian Princess") also wrote letters to herself which were not meant for publication, and in which she voiced the depression and despair she kept out of her memoirs, but also the full story of why and how she left Sansibar, which only gets five or so lines in the memoirs (the later focus on her older siblings and family history instead). It all read and sounded truly intriguing, and I will check it out.
Not all authors are gifted speakers, mind. Rüdiger Safranski, who already gave us a book about Goethe and Schiller and a Schiller biography, has now delivered a highly readable Goethe biography, about which he talked with Goethe expert Gustav Seibt, but alas his voice is still... not the most fortunate to have for such an occasion. However, he still has a nice sense of huimour: when asked about Goethe's changeability, he quoted the man himself who said when accused "but Herr Geheimrat, last year you expressed a completely different point of view", in a nonchalant reply: "One doesn't get 80 by constantly thinking the same things". Mr. Seibt, who always writes the Goethe articles for the Süddeutsche Zeitung, brought up the fact that for all the long life and no drama attitude, Goethe drank a lot - by today's standards, enough to call him an alcoholic (two litres per day), and yet there aren't any accounts of him trodding about drunk. Whereupon Rüdiger Safranski couldn't resist pointing out that Goethe drank the most during his years of friendship with Schiller, hence also the weight gain during said years (that made them look like like Stan and Ollie when walking around), and that good old G. lost that weight again (by dialing back the two litres per day?) after Schiller's death. Sadly, Mr. Seibt didn't ask him about the context of boozing it up and having a rival-turned-best-friend hanging around.
Speaking of boozing it up: the evening receptions at the Frankfurt Book Fair often last until the early morning hours. Now yours truly isn't a night owl, but this is the one time in the year where I really don't get rmuch sleep. Otoh one hears all the literary gossip at those parties, including the one about the lamentable soap opera which is the story of the once famous Suhrkamp Verlag (currently involved in declarations of insolvency, a bitter power struggle between the shareholders and 120 authors threatening to leave it). Sadly, said gossip was told confidentally, and thus I can't share. Right now, I'm off to another evening reception, and hope to return with more shareable news.
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