The Frankfurt Book Fair--From Cover to Cover

While it was across town from the home of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and a short drive from Mainz, where Johann Gutenberg invented movable type, the 38th annual Frankfurt book fair attested more to the city’s contemporary image as a trade and financial center than to its literary heritage.

For six days, ending this Monday, nearly 7,000 publishers from 86 countries trod miles of book stand aisles and negotiated over the dotted line in the frenzied autumnal rite of buying and selling more than 300,000 new books.

Yet despite its inherent rush, the fair was seen in most quarters as orderly and businesslike, with talk centering more on the buying of publishing houses than the buying of books. Still it had its moments, with a spate of mega-books by world celebrities announced for publication.

Most sensational was Alfred A. Knopf’s surprise announcement that the firm, which will publish Yelena Bonner’s “Alone Together,” later this month, has bought Andrei Sakharov’s memoirs, smuggled out of the Soviet Union. “This was really top secret,” said Marta Levin, director of subsidiary rights for Knopf’s parent company, Random House. “No one at Random House knew about it.”

The house also revealed another closely guarded coup, the acquisition of Philippine President Corazon Aquino’s autobiography, which will be published at the earliest in 1988. Said Levin, “I found out about the book the day I left for the fair.”

In big-league deal-making, rights to the Aquino book were sold to Collins in London for an undisclosed amount.

After two days of preliminary talks and an hour of tense negotiation in a small, curtained back room, Random House also sold rights to Penguin for a tale of how Hitler was chased down by Soviet secret agents after his faked suicide. The book, a second novel by Joseph Heywood, went for $90,000.

Rejoicing in Sweden

There was also rejoicing at Sweden’s Norstedts publishing house, where the manuscript of cinematographer Ingmar Bergman’s autobiography is expected within the next two weeks. “I’ve been waiting for this for 20 years,” said Norstedts chief, Lasse Bergstrom. “It is the peak of my publishing life.”

Bergstrom said he expected an eventual English-language deal to be $2 million. “I’m convinced that Bergman writing about his life is very interesting,” the Swedish publisher said.

The year’s literary buzz was about “City of Miracles” by Eduardo Mendoza, a Spanish writer who is virtually unknown in English. Rights to his book, sold at the fair to six countries, were being handled, however, by noted Barcelona agent Carmen Balcells, who has honed her reputation by bringing in such formerly anonymous authors as Mario Vargas Llosa, Jose Donoso and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Drenka Willen, who represents Helen and Kurt Wolff, which bought Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose” three years ago for $4,000, purchased “City of Miracles” a month before the fair “for very little.”

Willen, who concentrates on Eastern European writers, noted that the success of “The Name of the Rose,” and Czechoslovakian writer Milan Kundera’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” have whetted American interest in foreign books.

Eastern Europe Booster

Roger Straus, the literary warhorse of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, was also looking to Eastern Europe as well as at Germany and Latin and South America. The publisher held a private dinner with little-known Yugoslavian writer Danilo Kis, who flew in from Paris to finalize agreement to publish two books within the next year. The sedate Straus, in a Hermes scarf and working in a shoe-boxed sized booth, thumped his new writer as “an inch better than Kundera.”

Celebrity publishers Lord George Weidenfeld and Ann Getty were also looking for finds for their year-old American publishing venture of which Getty is president.

Yet despite the publishing activity, the word in the aisles was that bankers would soon outnumber publishers at the fair. Just before the fair, the German conglomerate Bertelsmann took over Doubleday, and the fair also saw Penguin’s purchase of the U.S. paperback house, New American Library. “It’s an accident,” Penguin’s Peter Mayer said, shrugging off the proximity of the two ventures. “The fair is about books .”

Publishing colleagues, however, did not agree. “It’s culturally sad,” big business opponent Straus said of the takeover. “Large groups lose interest in authors who are not best sellers.”

Still there were grumbles over the way the fair has changed. Said independent publisher George Braziller, “When I started coming here we talked about books and authors. Now people talk about acquisitions the way they talk about real estate in New York.”

‘It’s a Bookless Fair’

And despite the plethora of titles, Louis Baum, editor of England’s prestigious journal, The Bookseller, declared over a late-afternoon’s glass of wine, “It’s a bookless fair.”

Not even Sakharov’s memoir, with foreign rights allotted before the fair, was causing gasps. Said Tom Rosenthal, head of England’s small, tony Andre Deutsche, “How many people read the dissidents’ books? Publishers feel they have a duty to oppose censorship. There’s cold warriordom in it all. It’s bashing the Russians every time one of these books is published.” Mario Andreose, editorial director of the Fabbri-Bompiani Group in Italy, which published “The Name of the Rose,” said he did not consider the Sakharov memoirs to be “a big book. Svetlana Stalin’s book was a disaster in Italy,” he said.

There were both bright and light spots at the fair. Liz Calder, one of Britain’s most highly respected fiction editors, was on hand representing Bloomsbury Publishing, Ltd., created just two days before the fair opened.

At the other end of longevity, colleagues celebrated Roger Straus’ 25th year at the fair with an anniversary cake, and the publisher declared happily, “It’s probably the biggest Frankfurt I’ve ever had.”

As a gesture to smooth ruffled feathers over the scheduling of the fair, the fair management arranged for Rosh Hashanah services at Frankfurt’s new Jewish Cultural Center, though many of the American Jewish publishing officials had left by the weekend.

Rumor Mills Spinning

Otherwise, rumor mills were spinning, directors were jotting down hot book tips on bar coasters, and there was the usual grousing about fatigue and the high price of the Scotch.

A gaggle of celebrities was also present at the fair. Pat Conroy was celebrating the publication of “The Prince of Tides,” Dr. Ruth was working the aisles, waving to fans.

The massive annual Bertelsmann fling in the ballroom of the Frankfurt Intercontinental remained the fair’s only crash-proof party with two security guards receiving invitations at the foot of the staircase.

The most sumptuous Los Angeles presentation was “The Spiritual in Art, Abstract Painting 1819-1985,” the freshly printed catalogue for the opening of the county museum’s Robert O. Anderson wing in November.

At the stand of Harcourt Brace & Jovanovich, foreign rights director Carole Lazare was pitching a first novel by a young Los Angeles writer named Fred Kaufman. “He’s adorable,” she told Italy’s Mario Andreose. Lazare cited the first line of Kaufman’s oeuvre, “I had the first three beers of my life tonight.” The title is “42 Days and Nights on the Iberian Peninsula With Anis Ladron.” Andreose said the title was long. Lazare called it Hemingwayesque. Andreose said Ladron in Italian means thief. Lazare said she was sure Kaufman knew that. “He’s very smart.” Andreose said to send him a manuscript.

So the fair passed, in buying and selling sessions, with directors, as one young editor said, “trying to add another notch to their rifles” and editors, caught in the hurly-burly, doing their best to resist buying books “they wouldn’t consider in the clear light of day.”

“It’s not a volatile fair,” Penguin’s Mayer summed up the sentiments, while Andreose expressed the hopes of some participants. Asked when there would be another “The Name of the Rose,” he replied: “Everybody asks me that.”