«I remember an afternoon in the late seventies when Jorge Luis Borgesthe great Borges, was at the Alianza Editorial booth signing some of his books and “You didn’t even have to wait in line, there were very few who recognized him.”the scriptwriter and writer says with emotion Javier Rioyo. It was a first glimpse of a phenomenon that has grown more over the years, in this time of influencers, youtubers and famous ones of 15 minutes, and the fact is that, in general terms, the authors of greatest literary value are not the most in demand by the public to have their books signed. But the Madrid Book Fair, which is now entering its final week, is above all a popular festival in which booksellers and publishers make cash, people enjoy a cultural outing, and writers are both passersby and guest stars. A double role that generates numerous anecdotes.
The writer José Carlos Llopwho has just published a book of memories, If one summer morning, a traveler (Alfaguara), says that around 1995, and despite the fact that in the booth there was a poster with his photograph next to the title of the book he had just published, The Stein Reportand was surrounded by “twenty copies of the novel displayed like fish in the market”, a lady “picked up a biography of Carl von Linnaeus” and insisted that it was her book. «Very kindly, I replied that I wish, but that mine was The Stein Report and that the other was about a great naturalist». He tried to convince her of her mistake, but to no avail. Llop ended up writing a dedication in his best handwriting, “large and imitating 18th century”, as if he “wrote with a goose quill”, signing with the name “Linnaeus”. The writer adds that the reader “went to pay for it very satisfied, without having taken a single look at my novel, that she was not interested at all.”
There are also occasions when visitors are so clear about the importance of the person in front of them that they don’t really know how to react. This is the case of the anecdote that tells José Antonio Montano. «A friend of mine was in love with Mario Vargas Llosa and she got so excited that she didn’t dare go alone to have a book signed and I had to go with her,” she remembers. «When it came time for her signing, she froze and did not give him the book. I had to give it to him. Vargas Llosa signed it and when he said goodbye, the friend finally managed to speak: ‘Don Mario, thank you for existing.’ To which he replied: ‘Miss, you are a flower’».
But more common is the case of the writer who spends dead hours without receiving the attention of the public, a situation that amuses many. Andrés Trapiello. The author of Weapons and letters and he just published the book Fractal, who brings together a selection of his diaries between 1987 and 2006, he says that on days like this, when “you don’t sign anything,” he dedicates himself to observing people and seeing how they look at him. “When we don’t sign, people’s gaze is curious to say the least, since there are those who look with enormous pity and those whose eyes shine.” “First look at your name on the sign to see if they recognize it,” and if they do, “They look at you with a kind of evil, rejoicing in that little humiliation that you are experiencing”.
Faced with the same situation, other authors have a different experience. Jacobo Bergarecheat the fair marked by the covid-19 pandemic, remembers that in that anomalous edition, where “people spent perhaps six hours in line” to have a book signed, “the biggest queue was “Gerónimo Stilton, who was a man dressed as a mouse”. At that moment, adds the author of The perfect dayshe wished “he had a mouse suit to sign books instead of standing there looking sad, waiting for someone to come.”
To avoid that kind of humiliationmany authors summon family and friends, a practice that Luis Antonio de Villena sentence. The fair “is not the place” for that type of meeting. But there are others, as Trapiello points out, that are exciting. “When you meet people from your childhood“, from school, which you haven’t seen in a long time, from the most incredible places, for which you once felt great affection, even from a girlfriend, and that is also wonderful.”
Happy encounters, small disappointments or surprising mistakes, the Madrid Book Fair marks a before and after in the routine of the year. As it says Fernando Savater: «When I have already gone to the fair and signed, that for me is the beginning of summer. I have attended this fair for more than 50 years. I have met it in all locations, with good weather, with bad, with many people and with little, and it is always something that I want to visit. It is a pleasant and bright time». Bright days when readers and writers share anecdotes and literature.
