Scarcely has he taken a bite of the croissant he has ordered than Gaby in her forthright way, a trait he admired about her when they were together, says that he can forget about adding Litmus to the Globish empire. She is about to issue a press release to announce the acquisition of a brand new Angels title to which they have world rights and which they intend to crash out in a couple of months – the company’s 2009 top line, bottom line and cash flow are all assured, and he can forget about wooing any shareholders into parting with their holdings.
Mortimer has known this for months (it is hard to keep anything really quiet in the world of publishing, especially to someone with his resources), but he pretends he does not know, and says with just the slightest hint of disappointment showing on his broad face that he is delighted for her and for Litmus. He adds that he would even be content to be a minority shareholder; he thinks it is part of the corporate responsibility of bigger companies to encourage small independents to survive.
“We are not a small indie, Morty,” Gabrijela says tartly. “And if I were you I would worry about your own company; in these changing times, I think its vast, bloated companies like yours that are at the most risk.”
His smile grows broader. “Oh, we’re in better shape than ever,” he says mildly. “Our results this quarter are our strongest in ten years.”
“I’m sure they are,” she says sweetly, “I know how you guys manipulate your balance sheet and forecasts.”
He loves the way she is utterly unafraid to do battle with him; if only the circumstances had been different, perhaps they could have made a go of it. He holds the thought for a moment, luxuriates in it, and then regretfully lets it go. He is unusually congenial for the rest of the breakfast and even deigns to have a word or two with the publisher, whom he had barely glanced at when the meeting had started. When breakfast is over he kisses Gaby on the cheek, nods to Zach, and strides off towards the Globish booth.
“So, what did you think?” Gabrijela asks as they watch Mortimer’s broad back recede.
“He didn’t seem to notice I was around,” Zach says.
“Typical Morty,” she says. “He’s the ultimate starfucker. Likes to hang out with the rich and famous and powerful, but of course he has to occasionally tolerate us plebs. He can turn on the charm when he wants to, but otherwise you’re part of the furniture so far as he is concerned.”
“He didn’t seem to be put out that you had the new Seppi.”
“That means nothing. Once Morty has set his heart on something, he’ll keep trying to get it – it’s one of his few weaknesses, he hates being thwarted. Oh no, he’ll up his price, keep working on William and the others. I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him.”
“Aren’t you concerned?”
“Of course I’m concerned but there’s not a whole lot I can do, beyond what we’re already doing. Keep on fighting, keep the company healthy and prosperous, and hope we can maintain a united front.”
“And if he succeeds despite everything?”
“I’ll be out of a job, that’s for sure, but I think you’ll be fine: he will have the good sense to realize that if he is acquiring Litmus it’s not just for Seppi and the other authors he wants, it is for those who found them in the first place. Anyway, let’s not worry about any of that now, let’s get to our stall, I’m dying to see our angels.”
The nerve centre of Frankfurt Book Fair, the place in which the most lucrative deals are struck, is Halle 8, where the US and UK publishers are located. In the warren of stalls, the spots where the Big Seven publishers have pitched their tents are vast, spreading oases of opulence. While the smaller fry have to make do with cramped stalls, and indifferent food and drink purchased from surly wait staff at the food stations dotted throughout the hall, the big companies have gourmet sandwiches and food served to staff and their guests, a functioning office, and dozens of tables arranged throughout their acreage at which business is conducted without pause. Shelves are filled with top-of-the-line bestsellers, life-sized posters display the faces of star authors, and enormous blowups of their logos proclaim their might to every passerby.
When Mortimer walks up to his stall, the sight of the Globish logo, a cougar looking over its shoulder, fills him with pride, and the furious activity taking place within the stall touches a chord within him. He loves the sight of the “little people,” as he refers to them privately, scurrying around and swelling the coffers of Globish Inc. with their labours, insignificant though they may be. (When he makes his speeches at company gatherings or addresses them in the letters he writes to all employees every month, these lowly employees are transformed into “valued members of the Globish family.” He is only too aware of the irony given the mess he has made of his own personal life, but he knows such hypocrisy is another aspect of the corporate game he has to play.) He feels genuinely choked up for a moment – they are doing all this for me! – briefly forgetting that he thinks every one of the people he employs is eminently disposable. This is not unusual, for one of Mortimer’s greatest assets, built up over the years, is his effortless ability to reconcile the various contradictions that make up his psyche. He is entirely sincere when he tells a young executive receiving a promotion that he “will be CEO one day,” and he is just as sincere when he informs the same manager a year later that he has no option but to get rid of him because he has to lay off ten per cent of the managerial cadre.
He makes his way to his table at the centre of the stall and beckons to one of the hard-pressed women at reception to send in his first appointment of the day, an eminent Korean publisher. The fact that they do not have a language in common is nothing more than a minor inconvenience; he likes Mr. Park and is generally approving of the way Asian CEOs conduct themselves. There is no pretence at egalitarianism, they accept the bowing and scraping that their exalted position entitles them to, and there is none of this nonsense about pandering to the needs of subordinates. He remembers his visit to Mr. Park in Seoul, the ceremonial feast that was held in his honour, the army of formally dressed subordinates who sprang to carry out the slightest wish of the chairman – he can quite easily imagine himself running a company in Seoul. They chat for a while and then Mr. Park leaves after some confusion: Mortimer bows and his guest sticks out his hand, and then they reverse their greetings, before finally managing to grasp hands in a desperate gesture of farewell. A Norwegian publisher takes his place, followed by German, Japanese, and British publishers in quick succession. Their conversations are vague, for the truth is that Mortimer’s presence at the stall is wholly unnecessary – he is a showpiece, he is not a worker like the others; he is here to bestow a lordly gesture upon some unctuous underling, or smile benevolently as a visitor rattles off some incomprehensible request in Croatian or German.
When he first arrived at Globish, Mortimer drove his vice presidents and other subordinates crazy by insisting on doing actual work, before he realized that his role was not that at all – he was expected to come up with big-picture strategy, get on planes, make well-crafted speeches, look grave (but remain silent) when serious business matters were discussed, and be an equally silent spectator to the strings of e-mails that he was copied on every single minute of the day. When he was pressed for a decision, he had learned to say, “I will get back to you.” If the matter was unimportant it would soon be forgotten; if it was important, somebody else should be seen to be making the decision so that he could shrug off all responsibility if it turned out to be unworthy or unwise.
Just after the last visitor of the morning departs, a harassed-looking girl comes up with a message that his limo is waiting to carry him off to lunch with the director of the Frankfurt Book Fair, and Mortimer leaves Halle 8 for the day.
Two rows away from the Globish stall, in a much smaller, far less opulent space, Zach has had hardly a moment off, as an unending stream of visitors flocks to his table, galvanized by news of the fifth Angels novel. Few rights are left unsecured: they have sold the book to every one
of the forty-eight publishers who have published the previous novels, in keeping with Seppi’s wishes; he has left it to his rights director to sell any further territories in which there has been interest and she has already sold Farsi and Vietnamese rights, and is negotiating with a Serbian publisher.
He snatches a sandwich and a Coke between appointments and settles in for a long day of repeating the same story over and over again. Although this becomes deadly dull after the first few repetitions he doesn’t mind, this is what every publisher dreams about, to be at the very centre of the excitement that sweeps the world when a book begins to command an extraordinary following. His next appointment is with Kaisa, the Finnish publisher of Seppi whom he had channelled momentarily during his holiday in Thimphu. She is a dark-haired, whip-smart woman with violet eyes, a startling hue that he thought was unique to Liz Taylor. She brings up a subject that many of the publishers have discussed with him – the thematic shift and striking change of style in Storm of Angels.
“Does the content concern you?” she asks.
“Not at all,” he says. “It is more political than its predecessors because it is the only one of Seppi’s novels to be set in our times, and it cannot have been otherwise. If the others weren’t historical novels you might have considered them to be rather more political than they seem to be.”
“And the style?”
“Well, it is a second draft that his translator tidied up and made ready for publication, so it didn’t get the repeated revisions that the other novels had. Besides writers’ styles do change over time –”
“So, you have no concerns there?”
“Umm, no … Caryn had more input than might have otherwise been the case but you shouldn’t worry.”
“No, I’m not worried, not really,” she says doubtfully.
After she leaves, he looks at his schedule, sees he has a few minutes for a quick bathroom break. He hopes the queue won’t be too long and is just about to get up from his table when a voice hails him cheerfully from behind.
“Zach, hi, hope you have a moment – I won’t take too much of your time.” He recognizes the voice and steels himself. No Frankfurt is complete without a meeting with Arthur Blayney, although Zach has never set up these appointments. Unfortunately, the Welshman is a published writer who is not literary enough nor commercial enough nor high profile enough to have made a breakthrough in commercial or artistic terms. To make matters worse, Arthur insists on coming to Frankfurt every year, with his sling bag stuffed with paperback editions of his published books, folders of clippings, a laptop with the scripts of his next two books that have been turned down dozens of times, in the forlorn hope that he might be adopted by some kind publisher or agent, despite the fact that for as long Zach has known him he has met with no success whatsoever. But it’s not just unsuccessful writers like Arthur who should stay away from Frankfurt, thinks Zach. He is of the view that no author should ever visit the fair, unless he or she belongs to the hallowed one per cent who are the toast of the profession. He cannot think of a place more disheartening or inhospitable to the average writer. Tens of thousands of people working themselves to the bone ostensibly in the service of authors, but when you come right down to it unless you are a VIEW, or Very Important Eminent Writer, the words author and writer are mere abstractions in the context of Frankfurt. Here, all the soldiers and generals of the publishing corps are engaged in the serious battle of books as a business, and the talent is at best a distraction, at worst an irritant.
Writers like Arthur who belong to the dead zone of once-published midlist authors should come no closer to Frankfurt than the airport for all the difference their presence makes. Zach suppresses his irritation and listens as the large, shambling man, with his round face, sad, brown Labrador eyes and unctuous smile, delivers his familiar litany of woe – indifferent publishers, vicious reviewers, unaware readers. He has heard this all before, you don’t get to be a publisher without having had to deal with writers who feel under-appreciated, but most of the writers he deals with are not like Arthur – twenty years after he was first published the man still doesn’t seem to get that there isn’t a vast conspiracy working against him and his effulgent genius.
“Did you know,” Arthur is whining, “one publisher said of Lolita, ‘I recommend it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.’ ”
There are a number of obvious things he could say to this. First, Arthur Blayney is not Vladimir Nabokov. Second, there are other equally impressive stories of publishers’ idiocy – Stephen King, John le Carré, John Grisham, J.K. Rowling, Anaïs Nin, Joseph Heller were all rejected by publishers at the beginning of their careers – but it doesn’t prove a thing beyond the fact that in a notoriously subjective and inexact business mistakes will sometimes be made. Third, for every story of ignorance and bad taste there are hundreds of thousands of stories of writers who might have remained unsung if they hadn’t been published with diligence, devotion, and vision.
He chooses to say nothing, because to say anything would be to prolong the conversation. He manages to slip away eventually when Apoorva turns up at his table, even though he knows that upon his return to London he will be inundated by self-pitying e-mails and Facebook posts. Arthur’s problem, not mine, he thinks.
As this is Apoorva’s first fair he has promised to take some time off to walk around Halle 8 with her, give her a feel for the place, introduce her to people she might find useful. Not that he thinks his support is critical; he has caught a glimpse of her from time to time passionately espousing the cause of her launch list to the people she is meeting with and is impressed by how confident she seems. As they walk along, peering into stalls, stopping for impromptu meetings with friends and colleagues in the hallways, he thinks that this Wordsworthian ramble through the publishing countryside, where every form of creativity is on display, from the striking photo books of Taschen and Thames & Hudson to the latest offering from hallowed imprints like Faber and Knopf, is the part of the Frankfurt experience he likes the best. If you’re a publishing professional, no matter how tedious the business of selling and buying rights can be, you cannot fail to be energized by the power of the industry you are part of at a place like Frankfurt – if the book is dead, if publishers are history, you wouldn’t know it here. Everywhere you look there are dozens of publishing people, Poles, Australians, Egyptians, Indians, Canadians, Japanese, and other nationalities that he can’t even begin to guess at, all with one goal: the dissemination of books and literature. What other business can even begin to compare with publishing, its richness, its variety, and its place at the very core of humanity’s cultural soul.
Only the previous week he had spent an exceedingly drunken evening with one of his novelists who had been shortlisted for a minor award. At one point, tears leaking from his eyes, Charlie had leaned over and said to Zach how fortunate he felt to be a novelist, the most recent in a long line of writers dating back to Shakespeare and even further beyond to when the first stories were told, each generation handing down its custodianship of the story to the next generation. As he thinks about his meeting with Charlie, in the middle of the organized chaos that is Frankfurt, Zach has an epiphany. He sees a river of stories, its headwaters stretching all the way to a time before time, to the beginnings of the human race when the first stories were told to a small band of listeners. Over the ages the river swelled and split off into hundreds and thousands of tributaries, and as it did so there came into being a group of people who were charged with channelling the flow to readers, removing obstructions, plugging leaks, filtering out impurities. And in the future, as the Internet really comes into its own, into being the ocean into which all these rivers would eventually flow, the need for publishers to regulate the dispersal of humanity’s stories to readers would only grow.
He has read somewhere that it is estimated that something like 146 million books have been published since records started being kept, and every year a couple of million more are added. If you add
ed in all the people who write in the online space, the ocean of stories would become a tidal wave, a tsunami that would drown its intended audience without dedicated publishing professionals to tame it, make sure it got to consumers in a way that best suited them. He recalls the argument he got into with that obnoxious professor in Delhi (so much has happened since that encounter that it seems a very long time ago, although barely three months have passed). He thinks, as he did back then, that Malik had got it wrong. Zach has no doubt that as time goes by the boundaries will become blurred, with retailers, agents, publishers, all those who purvey the work of those who create it, evolving into different versions of themselves but there will still be a role for them.
Just then they run into the Archangel Gabriel. Eight feet tall, with golden wings, and balls of fire shooting from his hands, he looks spectacular. There are three other archangels wandering around the fair. The walkabout signals the beginning of an ambitious marketing campaign for Storm of Angels that will cover every possible marketing channel – print, television, online, digital downloads, movie screens, outdoor, transit, video streaming and bundling, in addition to bookstore promotions. The “Reach Out and Touch an Angel” campaign will revolve around the four archangels (in keeping with the book’s premise, God will be known only by his absence until the moment of revelation). And here is where it has all begun, with these four stilt walkers from a circus in Hamburg, covered in non-toxic gold, silver, bronze, and emerald body paint, handing out goody bags containing an Angels T-shirt, a halo, a sample chapter, and for twenty-five lucky customers a day a Kindle loaded with the first five sections of the twenty-five-section tome. He watches Gabriel make his stately way down the aisle, then catches sight of his watch, bids Apoorva goodbye, takes a quick bathroom break – to his good fortune the queues aren’t long – and heads for his appointment with Julia at the agents centre in Halle 6.
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