Frankfurt Book Fair 2011

Yeah, baby. The book fair to woop all book fairs. It never ceases to amaze me each time I visit this fair how cordoned off the most significant part of it is (the most significant part to me, anyway). The fair is without a doubt huge. The human traffic here is also no less astonishing. People are everywhere and they’re all running around like little chickens with really big intellectual heads just waiting to be cut off. And then there are the dreams. Way beyond the comic section or the fantasy novel section or the section on utility books there is the section:

LitAG (pic of the section at book fair with literary agents.)

The literary agent section, baby. It is walled in. It is cordoned off. It is high security where there is one entrance – by invitation and/or appointment only. Where the real deals/dreams are made. I don’t know what it is that still stirs me about this part of the fair. I mean, I’ve long since given up on trying to get in. The industry and the host country of this fair have long since beaten me down. Game over, masochist boy. Just keep walking and attending and gettin’ the goosebumps. Maybe there is still a spark of hope (but not when you don’t write like you used to). I feel so small, so insignificant, in my place – as though being surround by the shear greatness of literary agents galore all in one huge multiple football field room could have any place for the likes of moi. No. Most certainly not. Here is where all the dreams of real-writers are made and not of worstwriters. Here is where it is determined whether or not you get famous or remain in the LOL part of wannabe-ness. Oh, how I wish the writers that are dealt with here all the success of the universe.

Rant on.

-tgs-