Críticas Magazine

Adriana V. Lopez

How to Approach BookFairs Rationally, Mendoza Style
May 24, 2008

Yes it’s that time of year again: the temperatures are finally warmer, and the heavy work months are becoming lighter. That means it’s time for those indoor and outdoor mega bookfairs to begin. Across the Atlantic, Madrid’s BookFair is celebrated from May 30-June 15 in the area surrounding its tree-lined promenade around its central park, El Parque de Retiro. In light of Madrid’s open-to-the-public-display of books, and especially after Spain’s spectacular year in sales with authors such as Ken Follett, Carlos Ruiz Zafón and Harry Potter (all attending the fair, except the last bespectacled one) Eduardo Mendoza, a frequent contributor to El Pais’s literary supplement, "Babelia" had a pretty wry editorial entiled "Of Fairs and Books" about bookfairs and how to approach attending them.

Oh the joy and pain that can accompany bookfairs. All those people, the noise, the over stimulation, the screaming bookcovers.  Whether you’re on the job, or a strolling (or harried) consumer, a collector, or a plain bibliophile, his words might ring true. Before I list some of the quotable highlights of Mendoza’s essay, first let’s talk about a book he cited entitled Historia del libro (History of the Book, Alianza Editorial, 2005) by Frederic Barbier where Mendoza mentions that the very first bookfair soon followed the invention of Gutenberg’s printing press in Germany in 1440. And though that bookfair may have had only one stand, it is amazing how fast the idea of showcasing books by the blossoming literary world’s zvengalis occurred. Thus, Frankfurt’s bookfair first began being celebrated in the middle of the 15^th century. The first best seller? According to Barbier: The Nuremberg Chronicles. It had a printing of 1.800 copies.

Here are some of Mendoza's highlights in translation: 

“A fair, how to put it, isn’t an amusement park, though it appears as one.......It’s not to say kids shouldn’t go, even when they have places for kids to paint their faces, which sometimes can cause more anguish than pleasure.”
He goes on to say that kids (or adults) shouldn’t go to bookfairs on some kind a binge.

 “When going to a bookfair, one should go as if they were going to the garden to pick the earth’s fruits: it's something tiring and essential. Only then can you find meaning to a bookfair that’s different from buying by catalogue.”

 “Okay (a bookfair) it's not a party. But a work reunion that’s more or less festive. Don’t get duped by the fact that we call the tedious, arduous and abominable homework of looking at and acquiring necessary and superfluous products, "going shopping" and we consider it a form of leisure.”

 “A book isn’t a toy and reading isn’t for fun---it goes against our modern pedagogy and certain curriculums that would have scandalized Darwin. The person who can enjoy themselves reading, like the surgeon who has a good time operating, is another matter.”

 
You just have to love, and laugh along with, Barcelona's great Eduardo Mendoza.

Posted by Adriana V. Lopez on May 24, 2008 | Comments (0)