I've got four exciting things for you to look at, if you get excited by the same kind of thing as I do.
First of all is Benjamin Stein's exciting book The Canvas, now available in Brian Zumhagen's English translation. A novel about truth and perception set mainly in Germany, Israel and America, it's a story with two beginnings and two endings, which is quite handy because that means it can be printed in a flip-over format. I read two chapters told by one narrator and then two by the other and then flipped over again, but it's up to you how you go about it. The book's been getting a lot of well-earned press attention, but just in case you hadn't noticed... I will also dine out forever on the story of how I recommended it to the publishers, who then commissioned another translator. But I was only mad for about ten minutes because I suspect Zumhagen did a better job than I could have done on all the religious aspects. And I know the author was very pleased with their collaboration. So hey - why not buy a copy?
And if you don't mind waiting a little while I'd also recommend Ann Morgan's forthcoming book Reading the World: Postcards from my Bookshelf. It says here that Harvill Secker will be publishing it in Summer 2014. The book grew out of Ann's blog A year of reading the world, for which she's spent the past year finding and reading books from all the countries. Which must be a mammoth project - take this post about trying to identify a full-length work of prose by a Liechtenstein writer available in English, for example, and you'll see some of the difficulties immediately. And look - she even called me up on the phone for a chat and wrote about Clemens Meyer's short-story collection All the Lights as Germany's contribution! "The publisher said the book will appeal to Bill Bryson, Nick Hornby, Elif Batuman and Anne Fadiman readers." Well, perhaps they're not wrong, but I haven't read any of them and am still looking forward to seeing this fascinating blog on paper, preferably with a round-up of what the author learned in the course of her year-long adventure.
And while we're on the subject of adventurous blogs-turned-books, have I ever recommended my friend Isabel Bogdan's fun-packed volume Sachen machen? Isabel is a lovely lady, a translator with a wicked and slightly silly sense of humour, who has an online column by the same name, in which she just goes ahead and tries stuff out. Like going to a heavy metal festival, getting a Chinese massage, riding a Segway, spending all night in a bookshop or getting one of those fishy pedicures - the only vaguely daring thing on her list that I've ever done. So Isabel goes and does all this stuff and writes about it in a humorous and affirmative manner, and very well of course because that's what she's good at.
So ages and ages ago, back when I was very tired and on a bit of a laziness bender blogwise, Isabel did a lovely reading in Berlin. It was organised by this geezer called Hermann Bräuer - and OMG! it says on his website that Stewart Lee thinks he's talented! I knew I should have got round to friending him on Facebook. Sheesh. Anyway, after the actual reading part there was a rather long drinking part to the evening, during which said allegedly talented comedian revealed that he's co-written the antithesis to Isabel's book, namely 101 Dinge, die Sie sich sparen können. 101 things you don't need to bother with. The plan was - guys, if you read this I hope you remember to put it into action - for Isabel and Hermann to go on tour together. Isabel will be a shiny golden angel of positive thinking with her beautiful blonde tresses, and dark-haired Hermann will be the devil on your other shoulder, telling you not to bother trying things out. The book's out in December so they should definitely play on the whole religion thing. I shall come along in a nice dress and hand out Christmas crackers specially doctored to contain German jokes, provided Stewart Lee comes too.
Showing posts with label benjamin stein. Show all posts
Showing posts with label benjamin stein. Show all posts
Tuesday, 25 September 2012
Thursday, 14 June 2012
Is Self-Translation the Future?
Benjamin Stein just reminded me of a speculative piece by Tom Hillenbrand (whose name I have to check every time I type it, sorry) about the future of publishing. Hillenbrand gives us ten bold theses on ebooks (in German), nine of which I won't go into.
However, point 10 is pretty damn fascinating for me, and prompted me to make a facetious comment when the piece was co-opted to a trade mag, which I rather regret now. Hillenbrand's thesis is that German (for the sake of simplicity, let's stick to just German) publishers or writers will start publishing their own English editions in Germany. He says the model in which a British or American publisher buys the English translation rights and then takes care of the translation and marketing will be passé in a fully digitalized market of the future.
To my mind, Hillenbrand has neglected one all-important factor in his calculation: the translator. While we are training up professional literary translators in the UK and the US now via degree courses and other programmes, there are still never going to be enough to meet demand should every author start "self-translating", as I'd like to call it, analogue to self-publishing. Simply because of the fact that English-speakers no longer feel any great need to learn foreign languages. (As a brief aside: read Tim Parks' latest column for the NYRB blog for a look at how favoured English-language fiction is on European markets. I may come back to this later.) Under these conditions, into-English translations would be a sellers' market and the price would presumably rocket up, well above Hillenbrand's already underestimated "couple of thousand euro". The supply side would be very tricky indeed.
Secondly, we have the issue of quality and quality control. It's not a new argument that publishers provide these services, which are not guaranteed in self-publishing. British and American publishers have contacts to translators and are in a position to judge the quality of their work, and to edit it specifically for their market. What does happen already is that German publishers commission occasional translations of non-fiction titles, often on popular historical subjects (i.e. Nazis), which they do market themselves inside Germany, to tourists. However, the translation quality is hit-and-miss and the editing process is difficult, let's say, because the books' original editors aren't in a position to judge the translation quality and have to rely on freelance native-speaker editors whose work they usually don't know either.
Moot point number three is demand. There's already very low demand for translated fiction in English-speaking countries, for whatever reasons. Now I don't pretend that UK/US publishers have unquestionable taste, but at the moment it's them who guess at what might drum up some demand among English-speaking readers. In my modest experience of German publishers' ideas of what might go down well in the UK/US, I'd say they're not always terribly good judges. And if we ask the authors themselves, well. We all have ego issues. With the way things are going, I don't see demand increasing sufficiently for it to be worthwhile investing - let's say - €10,000 (for translating, editing and typesetting a short book) on the off chance.
Benjamin also raised the point of German publishers lacking knowledge of the UK/US market with regard to taste in cover design, marketing, etc. I think that's a very good point, although Hillenbrand seems to be arguing that there won't be much need for those aspects in his publishing u-/dystopia.
So while I suspect self-translation will indeed happen more often in the future as it gets easier to produce books in digital-only form, I don't agree that everybody will jump on the bandwagon. Certainly I wouldn't recommend it, although if the idea were to take off, the quality glitch at least might be ironed out over time. What I find fascinating is the way Hillenbrand's thesis is almost diametrically opposed to Parks' idea of Anglo-American fiction's dominance and its effects on European reading (and writing) habits. At the risk of getting facetious again, under the present circumstances self-translation would be pretty much a vanity project, and an expensive one at that.
Update: As this brief item in German trade mag Buchreport reveals, it turns out that some publishers are already involved in self-translation. More soon.
Update update: Here's the more.
However, point 10 is pretty damn fascinating for me, and prompted me to make a facetious comment when the piece was co-opted to a trade mag, which I rather regret now. Hillenbrand's thesis is that German (for the sake of simplicity, let's stick to just German) publishers or writers will start publishing their own English editions in Germany. He says the model in which a British or American publisher buys the English translation rights and then takes care of the translation and marketing will be passé in a fully digitalized market of the future.
The market entry costs are now negligible; no one is stopping the German publisher (or the author himself) from translating a book themselves and marketing it worldwide via iTunes and Amazon.com.
Even for a title that doesn't seem to have great potential for the English-language market, it will still make sense to put a translation onto the market on the off chance. The Anglo-Saxon market is gigantic and nobody really knows anyway why certain books are successful.
A translation only costs a couple of thousand euro, putting the digital book on Amazon is free and then the title is accessible for half a billion readers. It's cheap, it's high-potential and so everyone will do it.I started discussing the point with Benjamin and soon realized I couldn't do so either in German or via a comments section. So I'd like to go into it in more detail here, with particular reference to my field, which is translating fiction.
To my mind, Hillenbrand has neglected one all-important factor in his calculation: the translator. While we are training up professional literary translators in the UK and the US now via degree courses and other programmes, there are still never going to be enough to meet demand should every author start "self-translating", as I'd like to call it, analogue to self-publishing. Simply because of the fact that English-speakers no longer feel any great need to learn foreign languages. (As a brief aside: read Tim Parks' latest column for the NYRB blog for a look at how favoured English-language fiction is on European markets. I may come back to this later.) Under these conditions, into-English translations would be a sellers' market and the price would presumably rocket up, well above Hillenbrand's already underestimated "couple of thousand euro". The supply side would be very tricky indeed.
Secondly, we have the issue of quality and quality control. It's not a new argument that publishers provide these services, which are not guaranteed in self-publishing. British and American publishers have contacts to translators and are in a position to judge the quality of their work, and to edit it specifically for their market. What does happen already is that German publishers commission occasional translations of non-fiction titles, often on popular historical subjects (i.e. Nazis), which they do market themselves inside Germany, to tourists. However, the translation quality is hit-and-miss and the editing process is difficult, let's say, because the books' original editors aren't in a position to judge the translation quality and have to rely on freelance native-speaker editors whose work they usually don't know either.
Moot point number three is demand. There's already very low demand for translated fiction in English-speaking countries, for whatever reasons. Now I don't pretend that UK/US publishers have unquestionable taste, but at the moment it's them who guess at what might drum up some demand among English-speaking readers. In my modest experience of German publishers' ideas of what might go down well in the UK/US, I'd say they're not always terribly good judges. And if we ask the authors themselves, well. We all have ego issues. With the way things are going, I don't see demand increasing sufficiently for it to be worthwhile investing - let's say - €10,000 (for translating, editing and typesetting a short book) on the off chance.
Benjamin also raised the point of German publishers lacking knowledge of the UK/US market with regard to taste in cover design, marketing, etc. I think that's a very good point, although Hillenbrand seems to be arguing that there won't be much need for those aspects in his publishing u-/dystopia.
So while I suspect self-translation will indeed happen more often in the future as it gets easier to produce books in digital-only form, I don't agree that everybody will jump on the bandwagon. Certainly I wouldn't recommend it, although if the idea were to take off, the quality glitch at least might be ironed out over time. What I find fascinating is the way Hillenbrand's thesis is almost diametrically opposed to Parks' idea of Anglo-American fiction's dominance and its effects on European reading (and writing) habits. At the risk of getting facetious again, under the present circumstances self-translation would be pretty much a vanity project, and an expensive one at that.
Update: As this brief item in German trade mag Buchreport reveals, it turns out that some publishers are already involved in self-translation. More soon.
Update update: Here's the more.
Wednesday, 6 June 2012
Hooray for Juli Zeh, Ilja Trojanow and Benjamin Stein!
There's been a great deal of hullaballoo in Germany recently about Urheberrecht. Which is like copyright only the rules are slightly different, I believe. First a musician-cum-writer gave an angry radio interview about people expecting something for nothing on the internet. There followed statements by groups such as scriptwriters, crime writers, and so on. Then several thousand writers signed an appeal against alleged calls to abolish Urheberrecht. I'd have linked to it except it keeps making my browser crash. That might (but probably doesn't) have something to do with the fact that anonymous activists got annoyed with them and published a list of their email addresses. Thus making the anonymous activists look terribly big and clever, but perhaps not helping the debate along hugely. A number of individual writers then presumably felt threatened by the nasty electronic media and wrote rather silly pieces about how the net is ruled by semi-illiterate idiots. Then came the counter-appeals, and so on and so forth.
I'd been holding out on the subject, to be frank, because it's a very complicated issue that I feel is something for people to work out who understand intellectual property law, i.e. lawyers. And although I was encouraged to sign the mass appeal I decided not to. I can understand why German writers are running scared, looking at the record industry's rapiddecline transformation. I'm an old-fashioned girl but I know musicians and even record sellers who download tracks illegally. And then imagine you've just woken up to the existence of the e-book, like basically all of Germany, and think what a shock you'd get. Eavesdropping on countless Facebook conversations, I could see that even those writers who are actually on Facebook and thus, like, totally down with the kids, are worried about pirated electronic copies of their books.
The only point of my own I have to make, which has no doubt been made before but after a while I stopped following the debate, is that I know musicians now make up for some of the losses caused by illegal downloads through live appearances. And they're something that many writers shine at too, and which can already earn them alot decent amount of money once they hit that point of people wanting to pay to see them. Especially in Germany, where they're paid as a matter of course. So calm down, will you?
Well they already have, but I still wanted to draw your attention to three writers who are saying things I think make sense. First of all came Benjamin Stein in his blog Turmsegler. He pointed out that criticism of the evil middle-men is exaggerated, because writers need someone to do their editing, printing, marketing, royalties accounting, and so on. And that customers don't necessarily want to get creative content for free, as the major success of iTunes proves - they want things to be reasonably priced and simple to get hold of. Yes, he says, reform Urheberrecht to reflect what the internet enables us to do now, but don't abolish it.
Then Juli Zeh was interviewed along with her publisher Klaus Schöffling (love german books German publisher of the year 2011!). That was in last week's issue of the weekly Die Zeit. And here, Zeh says that high pricing of e-books encourages illegal copying, while Schöffling says, well we're not a big enough company to start lowering the prices. A strange argument, considering he also says they only sold 270 electronic copies of a hardcover that broke the 20,000 margin. But neither of them are keen on punishing individuals for ripping off e-books.
And then Zeh - who's a lawyer, hooray! - and Ilja Trojanow had a terribly sensible piece in Sunday's FAZ. They point out that piracy is so far no real threat to German writers and they add some realistic calculations to the mix. They remind us that nobody's seriously suggested abolishing Urheberrecht anyway, no, not even the digital Blackbeards of the Pirate Party. And they suggest that the upshot of all this focus could be yet more surveillance on the internet.
Oddly enough, all three of these authors have made it into English. Benjamin Stein's novel The Canvas (trans. Brian Zumhagen) is coming out any day now from Open Letter Books - a tiny weeny publishing company that has done its bit on the innovative e-book pricing front, incidentally. Ilja Trojanow made it big, big, big with his Collector of Worlds (trans. Will Hobson), and Juli Zeh's latest English translation (by the wondrous Sally-Ann Spencer) is The Method - about a meddling state. My guess is that Stein's just incredibly internet-savvy - being one of the very, very few German writers who even blogs, and an IT bod aside from that (and apologies for these parentheses inside dashes, but I'd just like to emphasize my belief that a lot of German writers and indeed readers are still very shy of the internet in general, which is something I'll rant about on another occasion) - and Trojanow and Zeh have seen the future in the UK and US book industry and aren't afraid of it.
Certainly the whole debate hasn't shown many people in a good light. Now the political parties are gradually launching new position papers on intellectual property rights and the internet, safe in the knowledge that thousands of voters really are interested. Of course that's all much less sexy than signing an appeal - on a website to boot.
I'd been holding out on the subject, to be frank, because it's a very complicated issue that I feel is something for people to work out who understand intellectual property law, i.e. lawyers. And although I was encouraged to sign the mass appeal I decided not to. I can understand why German writers are running scared, looking at the record industry's rapid
The only point of my own I have to make, which has no doubt been made before but after a while I stopped following the debate, is that I know musicians now make up for some of the losses caused by illegal downloads through live appearances. And they're something that many writers shine at too, and which can already earn them a
Well they already have, but I still wanted to draw your attention to three writers who are saying things I think make sense. First of all came Benjamin Stein in his blog Turmsegler. He pointed out that criticism of the evil middle-men is exaggerated, because writers need someone to do their editing, printing, marketing, royalties accounting, and so on. And that customers don't necessarily want to get creative content for free, as the major success of iTunes proves - they want things to be reasonably priced and simple to get hold of. Yes, he says, reform Urheberrecht to reflect what the internet enables us to do now, but don't abolish it.
Then Juli Zeh was interviewed along with her publisher Klaus Schöffling (love german books German publisher of the year 2011!). That was in last week's issue of the weekly Die Zeit. And here, Zeh says that high pricing of e-books encourages illegal copying, while Schöffling says, well we're not a big enough company to start lowering the prices. A strange argument, considering he also says they only sold 270 electronic copies of a hardcover that broke the 20,000 margin. But neither of them are keen on punishing individuals for ripping off e-books.
And then Zeh - who's a lawyer, hooray! - and Ilja Trojanow had a terribly sensible piece in Sunday's FAZ. They point out that piracy is so far no real threat to German writers and they add some realistic calculations to the mix. They remind us that nobody's seriously suggested abolishing Urheberrecht anyway, no, not even the digital Blackbeards of the Pirate Party. And they suggest that the upshot of all this focus could be yet more surveillance on the internet.
Oddly enough, all three of these authors have made it into English. Benjamin Stein's novel The Canvas (trans. Brian Zumhagen) is coming out any day now from Open Letter Books - a tiny weeny publishing company that has done its bit on the innovative e-book pricing front, incidentally. Ilja Trojanow made it big, big, big with his Collector of Worlds (trans. Will Hobson), and Juli Zeh's latest English translation (by the wondrous Sally-Ann Spencer) is The Method - about a meddling state. My guess is that Stein's just incredibly internet-savvy - being one of the very, very few German writers who even blogs, and an IT bod aside from that (and apologies for these parentheses inside dashes, but I'd just like to emphasize my belief that a lot of German writers and indeed readers are still very shy of the internet in general, which is something I'll rant about on another occasion) - and Trojanow and Zeh have seen the future in the UK and US book industry and aren't afraid of it.
Certainly the whole debate hasn't shown many people in a good light. Now the political parties are gradually launching new position papers on intellectual property rights and the internet, safe in the knowledge that thousands of voters really are interested. Of course that's all much less sexy than signing an appeal - on a website to boot.
Tuesday, 3 January 2012
Books and Things I'm Looking Forward To
I'm back! And thinking about what excitement 2012 has to offer for German book lovers. Here are a few books and things I'm looking forward to in the coming months.
Benjamin Stein follows up The Canvas (coming out in English in September, trans. Brian Zumhagen) with Replay in January. Very different, very exciting, very well written. You may be surprised. That may be part of the point.
Then in February we get to read Olga Grjasnowa's debut novel Der Russe ist einer, der Birken liebt. Or rather, you do - I already have and was extremely impressed.
Next out is Franziska Gerstenberg's third book, Spiel mit ihr. I'm hoping to finally find a female literary fiction writer who dares to write about (good) sex. We shall see.
More in February, a rather busy month: my friend Oliver Bottini has a new crime novel out, Der kalte Traum, which he researched in Croatia.
Another friend shares that release date (perhaps some horoscope thing?): Tamara Bach's fan-blooming-tastic YA novel Was vom Sommer übrig ist. You will weep. I did. I believe there will also be a launch party, at which I will get drunk in public and stroke people's faces but hopefully not weep.
Followed the next day by Thomas von Steinaecker's new novel Das Jahr, in dem ich aufhörte mir Sorgen zu machen und anfing zu träumen. It sounds intriguing, playing with the present and the future and using more than the written word.
Along similar lines, perhaps, is Matthias Senkel's Frühe Vögel, dealing with aviation and storytelling and again using unusual media, funnily enough recommended by Thomas von Steinaecker. Out in March.
And then a wee birthday gift in April from Suhrkamp (you shouldn't have!): a new collection of short stories by Ralf Rothmann - Shakespeares Hühner.
I'm also looking forward to the Leipzig Book Fair and attendant prizes in March and the London Book Fair in April (another birthday gift - really you are spoiling me...) but sadly and contrary to stubborn rumours, I won't be going to the no doubt excellent Festival Neue Literatur in New York in February. I will have at least two translations of my own out at some point in the year though: Helene Hegemann's Axolotl Roadkill (fingers crossed for June...) and Sibylle Lewitscharoff's Apostoloff. Plus possibly the book I'm working on now, Inka Parei's precise, intelligent and haunting novel Was Dunkelheit war. "My" authors Inka Parei and Clemens Meyer will be out and about in the English-speaking world, in the USA, the UK and New Zealand, and if all goes well Helene Hegemann should be in the UK to launch our book too. Oh, and New Zealanders can look forward to all sorts of amazing German-lit related delights as quid pro quo for being the guest of honour at this year's Frankfurt Book Fair.
Ah, who could fail to blush with anticipation in the face of all these treats?
Benjamin Stein follows up The Canvas (coming out in English in September, trans. Brian Zumhagen) with Replay in January. Very different, very exciting, very well written. You may be surprised. That may be part of the point.
Then in February we get to read Olga Grjasnowa's debut novel Der Russe ist einer, der Birken liebt. Or rather, you do - I already have and was extremely impressed.
Next out is Franziska Gerstenberg's third book, Spiel mit ihr. I'm hoping to finally find a female literary fiction writer who dares to write about (good) sex. We shall see.
More in February, a rather busy month: my friend Oliver Bottini has a new crime novel out, Der kalte Traum, which he researched in Croatia.
Another friend shares that release date (perhaps some horoscope thing?): Tamara Bach's fan-blooming-tastic YA novel Was vom Sommer übrig ist. You will weep. I did. I believe there will also be a launch party, at which I will get drunk in public and stroke people's faces but hopefully not weep.
Followed the next day by Thomas von Steinaecker's new novel Das Jahr, in dem ich aufhörte mir Sorgen zu machen und anfing zu träumen. It sounds intriguing, playing with the present and the future and using more than the written word.
Along similar lines, perhaps, is Matthias Senkel's Frühe Vögel, dealing with aviation and storytelling and again using unusual media, funnily enough recommended by Thomas von Steinaecker. Out in March.
And then a wee birthday gift in April from Suhrkamp (you shouldn't have!): a new collection of short stories by Ralf Rothmann - Shakespeares Hühner.
I'm also looking forward to the Leipzig Book Fair and attendant prizes in March and the London Book Fair in April (another birthday gift - really you are spoiling me...) but sadly and contrary to stubborn rumours, I won't be going to the no doubt excellent Festival Neue Literatur in New York in February. I will have at least two translations of my own out at some point in the year though: Helene Hegemann's Axolotl Roadkill (fingers crossed for June...) and Sibylle Lewitscharoff's Apostoloff. Plus possibly the book I'm working on now, Inka Parei's precise, intelligent and haunting novel Was Dunkelheit war. "My" authors Inka Parei and Clemens Meyer will be out and about in the English-speaking world, in the USA, the UK and New Zealand, and if all goes well Helene Hegemann should be in the UK to launch our book too. Oh, and New Zealanders can look forward to all sorts of amazing German-lit related delights as quid pro quo for being the guest of honour at this year's Frankfurt Book Fair.
Ah, who could fail to blush with anticipation in the face of all these treats?
Friday, 31 December 2010
Story-Taz
If you have access to German newspapers and love short stories, you should go out and buy the Taz today. It comes with a separate magazine - Erzähl-Taz - of short stories by writers from far and near, including new stuff from Cees Nooteboom, Sofi Oksanen, Edo Popovic and Ann Cotten, plus other pieces from the likes of Henning Ahrens, Jochen Schmidt, Benjamin Stein, Kim Thuy, Tina Übel and Ulf Erdmann Ziegler.
I'll be saving mine for tomorrow. What better way to see in the new year? Have a good one!
I'll be saving mine for tomorrow. What better way to see in the new year? Have a good one!
Thursday, 8 July 2010
Three Percent Pingpong
Sorry to source all my material from one place, but if you haven't just come from there you should now go to Three Percent, where Chad Post enthuses about this feature on Benjamin Stein and his book Die Leinwand. It's a great little film in English, a good introduction to the book, but unfortunately I'm not in it - even though I saw the film crew at Stein's reading in Berlin in May.
And I love the way independent publishers can still get excited about books.
And I love the way independent publishers can still get excited about books.
Wednesday, 28 April 2010
Sandig and Stein and German Readings Culture
There's one aspect of German literary culture that I particularly love, and that's all the amazing readings that take place. From just plain old writers at the front of a room, reading out loud with a glass of water at hand, to all-out literary performances with music and sound effects and art projected onto the walls and DJs and juggling clowns on stilts. And everything in between. A couple of weeks ago the literati got all hot under the collar about the best kind of readings. And surprise, surprise! In the end everyone agreed that it's fine to have a broad range of formats. So that's OK then. Most important of all, for me, is simply experiencing the writer at first hand, whether to get a taste of a book you don't know or to extend your understanding of one you do.
One of my favourite formats, and I've said this before, is the salon. An individual or a group of people invite a selection of writers every time, followed by drinks. And that social aspect is hugely important, forging friendships and getting us lonely bookworms out of the house and talking about books (and Angelina Jolie and knitwear and childcare and so on). Of course there's a danger that the same people will come every time and it'll turn into a terrible clique with bland, homogenous taste and opinions - but because most of these things are advertised in the press, I don't think that actually happens.
So Monday was a highlight for me, with two authors I wanted to see - Ulrike Almut Sandig and Benjamin Stein - reading at the Adler & Söhne salon. Unfortunately it was raining, so on this occasion it was indeed just the hardcore crowd in attendance - not even those two writers enjoying a rather public (fictional?) flirt seemed to be there (to my great disappointment, I have to add, as I'd have loved to see what she actually looks like, he being not much to my taste with such an oh, so apparently lecherous public persona).
But they all missed a treat.
Sandig is well known for her poetry but has now brought out a short story collection, Flamingos (click on "read an extract" for a translation by Susan Bernofsky). And what with my weakness for prose written by poets, I absolutely love it - eleven little gems of slightly strange fictions, playing consciously with the fact that they're stories on paper. They're loosely rooted in reality, she told us - mainly rural or smalltown East Germany - but that's not what interests her. She read two stories: the very strong first piece that describes a non-existent life backwards, hugely poignant, and what I find the weakest in the book but she said was the most personal, a meandering school bus ride redeemed by maritime metaphors. My favourite is a story about twins in one body, and not only because I once knew a boy who had to have a dead foetus removed from his abdomen. The stories are tricky, often with tiny details referring back to one another and mostly melancholy but never sentimental. A lot of deaths, a lot of fantastic portrayals of children and old people, who she told us are most interesting because their lives aren't set in stone. The book won the litCologne debut award and is getting rave reviews all over the shop, deservedly so. Oh, and Sandig herself comes across as someone quirky and funny who you'd love to be friends with - always a good sign.
Then came Benjamin Stein. I haven't read his new novel, Die Leinwand, but I'm going to have to now. It's printed so that you can start reading at either end, with the two strands meeting in the middle where you then have to flip the book over and start again. Loosely based around the case of Binjamin Wilkomirksi, the novel looks at that old evergreen, the nature of memory, from a slightly different standpoint - how memories and truths can be manipulated and faked. Stein read well, a pitch-perfect chapter about books and libraries and ownership and lies, featuring a down-to-earth wife who made me wonder all over again about fact and fiction. And then he surprised me by giving a slide show. He'd been on a research trip to Israel, where the book is partly set, in search of a mikveh where his two (!) showdowns take place. Germans aren't generally all that au fait with orthodox Judaism - and nor am I - so it was an unexpected lesson and gave us a great sense of Stein's love for his subject matter. The serious reader was suddenly transformed into a smiling enthusiast, showing us the people and places that inspired him.
And that's something you can't do on paper, one of the undisputed advantages of readings at their best, which make them so much more than mere PR events.
One of my favourite formats, and I've said this before, is the salon. An individual or a group of people invite a selection of writers every time, followed by drinks. And that social aspect is hugely important, forging friendships and getting us lonely bookworms out of the house and talking about books (and Angelina Jolie and knitwear and childcare and so on). Of course there's a danger that the same people will come every time and it'll turn into a terrible clique with bland, homogenous taste and opinions - but because most of these things are advertised in the press, I don't think that actually happens.
So Monday was a highlight for me, with two authors I wanted to see - Ulrike Almut Sandig and Benjamin Stein - reading at the Adler & Söhne salon. Unfortunately it was raining, so on this occasion it was indeed just the hardcore crowd in attendance - not even those two writers enjoying a rather public (fictional?) flirt seemed to be there (to my great disappointment, I have to add, as I'd have loved to see what she actually looks like, he being not much to my taste with such an oh, so apparently lecherous public persona).
But they all missed a treat.
Sandig is well known for her poetry but has now brought out a short story collection, Flamingos (click on "read an extract" for a translation by Susan Bernofsky). And what with my weakness for prose written by poets, I absolutely love it - eleven little gems of slightly strange fictions, playing consciously with the fact that they're stories on paper. They're loosely rooted in reality, she told us - mainly rural or smalltown East Germany - but that's not what interests her. She read two stories: the very strong first piece that describes a non-existent life backwards, hugely poignant, and what I find the weakest in the book but she said was the most personal, a meandering school bus ride redeemed by maritime metaphors. My favourite is a story about twins in one body, and not only because I once knew a boy who had to have a dead foetus removed from his abdomen. The stories are tricky, often with tiny details referring back to one another and mostly melancholy but never sentimental. A lot of deaths, a lot of fantastic portrayals of children and old people, who she told us are most interesting because their lives aren't set in stone. The book won the litCologne debut award and is getting rave reviews all over the shop, deservedly so. Oh, and Sandig herself comes across as someone quirky and funny who you'd love to be friends with - always a good sign.
Then came Benjamin Stein. I haven't read his new novel, Die Leinwand, but I'm going to have to now. It's printed so that you can start reading at either end, with the two strands meeting in the middle where you then have to flip the book over and start again. Loosely based around the case of Binjamin Wilkomirksi, the novel looks at that old evergreen, the nature of memory, from a slightly different standpoint - how memories and truths can be manipulated and faked. Stein read well, a pitch-perfect chapter about books and libraries and ownership and lies, featuring a down-to-earth wife who made me wonder all over again about fact and fiction. And then he surprised me by giving a slide show. He'd been on a research trip to Israel, where the book is partly set, in search of a mikveh where his two (!) showdowns take place. Germans aren't generally all that au fait with orthodox Judaism - and nor am I - so it was an unexpected lesson and gave us a great sense of Stein's love for his subject matter. The serious reader was suddenly transformed into a smiling enthusiast, showing us the people and places that inspired him.
And that's something you can't do on paper, one of the undisputed advantages of readings at their best, which make them so much more than mere PR events.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)