BUCHBERLIN, praised by visitberlin.de as “Germany’s third-largest lit­er­ary event,” beck­oned bib­lio­philes and lit­er­ary enthu­si­asts alike to Are­na Berlin one week­end in late Sep­tem­ber. For those with a pen­chant for niche fic­tion and a pref­er­ence for the tan­gi­ble allure of in-per­son engage­ments over the 60 Hz flick­er of chat-room anonymi­ty, this book fair was the place to be. That’s why Fer­rars & Fields was on-site at the book fair in num­bers. Our three cor­re­spon­dents set out to nav­i­gate this lit­er­ary extrav­a­gan­za and pro­vide three dis­tinct takes on the event’s pageantry, pathos and print­ed materials. 

The Team: Mer­cy Fer­rars, Founder and Edi­tor-in-Chief of FFMag, Lucas Shiller, Eng­lish Lan­guage Edi­tor-at-Large and Zeke Green­wald, author, poet and friend of the magazine. 

MERCY FERRARS: Cathryn C. Holister’s Shenani­gans from Hell

Whether it’s at BUCHBERLIN or my quaint local book­store, I’m always on the prowl for the edgy, the dark, and the down­right demon­ic. Now, don’t get me wrong, BUCHBERLIN is not exact­ly short in the unusu­al, but like any estab­lish­ment in the main­stream world, it mas­ter­ful­ly dodges any­thing remote­ly sin­is­ter. So, there I am, just mind­ing my own busi­ness, when I hap­pen to catch a glimpse of Cathryn C. Holister’s delight­ful­ly dev­il­ish black and red coloured booth, which beck­oned me to come clos­er by the enchant­i­ng sway of its goth­ic Manekineko. Nat­u­ral­ly, it lures me in like a moth to a flame. Pen­ta­gram seals and post­cards, promis­ing a cup of haunt­ing dark brew with a hint of infer­nal shenani­gans instant­ly res­onate with my goth soul. And there is Holis­ter her­self, com­plete with blood-red con­tact lens­es and a set of dev­il­ish horns, pre­sent­ing her lat­est addi­tion to the Infer­no series, titled Chaos & Kom­plotte.

It seems like I have found where I belong.

Upon a clos­er inspec­tion, I come to the real­i­sa­tion that Holister’s lit­er­ary work is even more spell­bind­ing. Her lat­est nov­el revolves around the chron­i­cle of a pair of mis­chie­vous demons and their jam­boree in the nether­world. In-between their sto­ries, the nov­el ded­i­cates space to beau­ti­ful art­work craft­ed by the author her­self. Sin­ful­ly well-craft­ed illus­tra­tions of the under­world includ­ed with­in the book’s pages require the assis­tance of a spe­cial­ized app. Once you’ve sum­moned this dig­i­tal sor­cery, a three-dimen­sion­al man­i­fes­ta­tion of Holister’s dia­bol­i­cal char­ac­ters springs forth from the book’s pages, infus­ing them with a wicked, life-like aura. It’s like being immersed in Black Magic.

Find Cathryn C. Holister’s work here: 
https://inferno-books.com/
https://www.instagram.com/cathrynholister_author

LUCAS SHILLER: The Flipbook

Who hasn’t, in more child­ish days, sketched out a trem­bling flip­book? I, for one, was always dis­ap­point­ed that I couldn’t keep my stick fig­ures anchored in place, ren­der­ing any move­ment of theirs moot. This was appar­ent­ly no issue for Wiebke K. Fölsch, as she has tak­en this children’s pas­time and made it her day job. Her stand caught my eye by virtue of the sheer vari­ety of its images: a gold­fish swim­ming in its bowl, a paint­ing of a horned swine pranc­ing across a field, a phal­lus don­ning its con­dom, a pho­to­graph of a baby­doll admir­ing itself in a mir­ror. I approached, and the mys­te­ri­ous author of these diverse arti­facts hand­ed me a post­card with her infor­ma­tion on it. In Ger­man it read:
 
Wiebke K. Fölsch, Fairy — Por­trait Flip / Thum­bcin­e­ma,
www.wiebke-k-foelsch.de, 
and her email address. 

I bought the flip­book with the pranc­ing swine and was delight­ed to find, rec­to, the flip­book images and ver­so, a fable ren­dered by Got­thold Ephraim Less­ing in Ger­man with French trans­la­tion. Of swine there was no men­tion, but one awful­ly Nazarene sheep fea­tures promi­nent­ly. Here’s my eng­lish version:

As the poor sheep must suf­fer the tyran­ny of all oth­ers in the ani­mal king­dom, he came to Father Zeus and bid him relieve his sor­row. 
Zeus was inclined to hear the poor crea­ture and spoke to the sheep: “I see, you pious beast, that I have cre­at­ed you help­less, lack­ing all means to defend your­self. Tell me, then, how I should cor­rect this mis­take. Shall I arm you with fero­cious fangs and ter­ri­ble talons?”
“Oh, no!” said the sheep, “I do not want that in com­mon with prowl­ing preda­tors.”
“Or should I ren­der your spit­tle poi­son?” con­tin­ued Zeus. 
“Heav­ens no!” answered the sheep. “Every­one hates ven­omous snakes ever so much.”
“Then what should I do? I know! I’ll plant horns on your fore­head and strength in your neck.”
“Not that, dear Father! I’d quick­ly become bel­li­cose like a buck.”
“But, my dear sheep, you must your­self be capa­ble of inflict­ing harm, if you want to defend your­self from it.”
“Must I in truth?” com­plained the sheep. “If so, then leave me, Father, how I am. For the pow­er to hurt oth­ers awak­ens, I fear, desire for the same, and it’s bet­ter to suf­fer harm, than to harm my fel­low crea­tures!” 
Zeus blessed the pious beast, and nev­er­more did the sheep bemoan his fate. 

Weeks after BUCHBERLIN was over, I would find this curi­ous Wiebke lurk­ing in my qui­et hours, at my table when I ate meals alone, vis­it­ing me in the soli­tude of my show­er. Who was this elu­sive fairy? I googled her, but to no result. I tried her web­site: a dead link. I even reached out to the email address on the card she gave me, and imme­di­ate­ly a response! Alas, from Mail Deliv­ery Sub­sys­tem, that cru­el bear­er of bad news, telling me that the response from the remote serv­er was: 550 Request­ed action not tak­en: mail­box unavailable. 

Wiebke, if you’re out there, please, I have ques­tions! Get in touch!

Text of the Fable trans­lat­ed from Zeus und das Schaf with Ani­ma­tion by Wiebke K. Fölsch, Text by Got­thold Ephraim Less­ing, Paper­twins, Berlin, 2017.

ZEKE GREENWALD: Wood­land Elves, Gumshoes, Navy SEALs

‘Lesen ist Kino im Kopf, und ich lade dich her­zlich dazu ein, in die Serien einzusteigen.’ 
— Tan­ja Hagen, Authorin

Walk past the women, who have braid­ed their hair and wrapped it like a wreath about the tem­ples, join­ing the plait­ed locks over the oth­er unbound hair, which was falling down their backs, the women who have fit­ted pros­thet­ic points onto the tops of their ears (for it is believed in these igno­rant times that elves sport point­ed ears), the women who have paint­ed their brows and noses aqua­ma­rine or glau­cous with glit­ter added in. Walk past the drop­si­cal dames, some cov­er their fore­heads with black bangs, some fit their eye­balls with red con­tact lens­es, some wear demon­ic sym­bols, all wear black. Walk past the lads in drab capes and ecru but­ton-down shirts, like they think a cer­tain species of mild-man­nered wood­land dwarves would wear. Walk past the table of children’s ear­ly read­ers and masochis­tic crib-notes all by the same matron­ly author. Some peo­ple might talk about the uni­ty of all knowl­edge, but this was not what they had in mind. Walk past the old man hawk­ing a polit­i­cal satire. The dear man would rather bore a gen­er­al audi­ence with his humor, and spare his chil­dren and children’s chil­dren, not to men­tion nieces, nephews, and what­ev­er brood they’ve got among them. In short, walk past the mys­ter­ies, fan­tasies, erot­i­ca, and eso­teri­cism, the stray pirate or space alien. At the end of the sec­ond to last aisle, behold the paunchy fig­ure of a man fit­ted out in camo inde­scrib­ables. Strapped to his back is mount­ed a tan army back­pack. From the mil­i­tary-style ruck­sack hangs sev­er­al pink and green glow-sticks, uncracked.

The author, Tan­ja Hagen, stands behind the table laden with her books. She notices con­cerned glances direct­ed at her cos­tumed man. She deft­ly assures the onlook­ers: ‘Don’t wor­ry, he won’t bite. We made sure he had a decent break­fast this morn­ing.’ The onlook­ers are reas­sured, curi­ous. They ask Ms. Hagen, author of nov­els, what in the world this is all about? They motion to her, and her table, and the nov­els on her table, and the man she dressed in uniform. 

Her sto­ries all take place with­in a high­ly elite team of the already high­ly elite Navy SEALs (Sea, Air, Land). For (Amer­i­can) flag and coun­try, they under­take har­row­ing mis­sions in far-flung lands; they recov­er CIA agents abduct­ed by Iran­ian ter­ror cells, let’s say in the Sahel; they have steamy romances between the esteemed col­leagues of the very esteemed team. Romances! Among the elite of the elite! 

An onlook­er, grow­ing curi­ous, asks Ms. Hagen to elab­o­rate on the romance. 

‘Oh sure, the team is always falling in and out of tor­ren­tial pas­sions,’ Ms. Hagen replied. 

‘But with whom?’ the eager onlook­er enjoined the all-know­ing author.

The all-know­ing author sat­is­fies the curios­i­ty of the eager onlook­er: ‘The team mem­bers fall in love with each oth­er.’ Like priests in the face of dying believ­ers, Tan­ja Hagen, author of nov­els, has an easy, reas­sured man­ner, when she’s got a lis­ten­er per­ish­ing with curiosity. 

Unless Ms. Hagen means that her tales of lusty Navy SEALs include a great deal of homo­erot­ic intrigue, she has fan­ci­ful­ly installed a few females among these anti-coed­u­ca­tion­al troopers.

Ms. Hagen’s newest title ist Dark Jeal­ousy. More info at http://www.tanjahagen.de.