Madonna in Kaffee Burger Shock!

Read all about it! Madonna pisses off fans by spending the night at the "Burger Bar". I think this is hilarious news. Who'd expect to find Madonna in the rancid old Kaffee Burger front room, eh? I don't think there were any German books involved, but you never know... The venue is a hotbed of literary activity, after all. Just think, I've used the same toilet as Madonna now. In fact I probably haven't, because there's always a queue so I tend to go to the disabled one, but maybe La Ciccone did too. Or do people let you go first if you're famous?

Anyway, I'm posting a recycled report of my most recent visit to the Kaff - which afficionados pronounce "Kaffe Burger" in the good old East Berlin way - back in April of last year. Enjoy.

Accidental Poetry

Doh! Why does this happen to me? I gone and done it again - a darned poetry reading, yikes!
It really was an accident this time. My lovely little girl's best friend's mum's sister-in-law's old friend from art college was "reading" at Kaffee Burger down the road. There was no indication of what he would be reading, but I naively assumed it would be mildly amusing prose. Ooops!
I arrived to find a bevy of attractive ladies in their mid-to-late 30s doubling the percentage of women in the place (that was us - a girls' night out as it transpired). The rest of the meagre audience was male and over 40, wearing black. This man introduced the first two readers and my heart sank: he uttered the p-word. But he did also utter the c-word, as in "critical of society" - which sounds much better in German. Try it for size: GESELLSCHAFTSKRITISCH. Nice, eh?
Anyway the first part passed fairly quickly and harmlessly. I did try to listen but was distracted by, well, by almost everything actually. I know one of the poets said something about sticking some modern gadget up your arse though, as that captured my attention again. And then it was over.
But then this man mounted the stage, in his trademark leather waistcoat and camouflage trews, with flowing greasy hair. He proceeded to talk about some anthropologist's book from 1922 listing words from a purported "astral" language, which he and his "comrade" and former Stasi informer Sascha had made into poetry. He added that it might be a bit of a "strenuous experience", at which my mate said loudly "Yeah, but for who?" prompting titters and admiring glances from the black-clad over-40s. He then launched into the first of 5 "poems" made up of unintelligible rows of syllables, entirely devoid of meaning. It went something like this:
Hoobeddy doobeddy troobeddy har
Vargasa stargasa jargasa tree
Doala troala koala beding
and so on for about 2 minutes - for each poem.
You have to realise that the guy is a big famous poet who can afford to wear leather waistcoats in public. What you also need to know is that he is co-owner of the venue. So for most of the time, the audience put on a collective "hmmmm, interesting" face until we ladies collapsed into giggles. I admit I was the first to crack. It was so incredibly pseud-y that I couldn't work out whether he was having a laugh or not. I'm still not sure to be honest. I think he might have got a bit peeved towards the end, when one of our number (not me!) started talking loudly about the price of babysitters.
But we hadn't paid to get in so it was just about bearable. I'm still laughing at the utter cheek of it all, and at the way everyone was trying to explain it to each other afterwards. Someone once told me a friend of theirs regularly placed small ads looking for "scabs" - as in that crusty stuff you get on wounds, not strike-breakers. I think this was in that same league of craziness for the sake of it, or schoolboyish pranks as an excuse to drink beer afterwards or whatever. So next week you'll catch me reading the ingredients lists from my bathroom cabinet at Wembley Stadium, for one night only.

Recycled: Der bewaffnete Freund

Here's another good'un. Book, that is. It got me all tense and uncommunicative - that's a good thing in a book, I find, if not in a prescription drug.

It's about a young man who ends up driving a wanted Basque terrorist/freedom fighter across Spain - not something you'd really want to do. It starts out like one of those German books where nothing much happens in a foreign country (unlike the standard not much happening in Germany). The guy is an academic (not a promising characteristic in a novel) working on some research project in a place referred to as X throughout. In fact, although it's obvious, we are never told that the book is about ETA - a nice device that heightens the air of conspiracy. You get lots of descriptions of his rather lukewarm relationships with his daughter, his ex-girlfriend and his new not-quite boyfriend. The best bits at this stage are the surpressed arguments with his German and Spanish professors and his thoughts on European border policy. He's torn between supporting the Basque separatists on an emotional level and rejecting the way they define their aims and use murder to make their point.

Then suddenly, an old friend sends a messenger to ask him to drive him from France to Spain. Unfortunately, that old friend is a wanted man and the price for supporting terrorists is 5 years in prison, often accompanied by torture. Tough decision.
But the guy decides to do it, for all sorts of strange reasons. Ultimately, it's something you'd almost wish for - the chance to argue it out with someone whose cause you support, but whose methods you abhor. But the second half of the book is far less intellectual than the first, where all the arguments are basically set out. In fact, it has a quite racy tempo and you almost expect car chases and sirens. While you read the first half with your brain, the second half is for your heart. And that's kind of the whole premise of the book, with the "hero" gradually becoming more and more human.

Raul Zelik is an overtly and unapologetically political writer. But he manages to put across his message in such a way that reading him is not some kind of worthy activity for politniks alone. It's genuinely fun or entertaining or nerve-wracking or, at times, carpet-biting and shoe-on-the-lectern-banging.
I reccommend you try it.

Recycled: No Sleep Till Leipzig

I can't sleep. I'm so excited. The Leipzig Book Fair Prize nominations have been announced. Woah. Just look at that fiction.

First off, I've read Ulrich Peltzer's 'Teil der Lösung' (Part of the Solution) and it's an absolute cracker, really captures my Berlin, although I found the pace a little stolid at times.

Then there's the excellent and *very* charming Feridun Zaimoglu with a love story revolving around a man who ends up in a coach crash in Turkey. Strangely, Zaimoglu himself was involved in a coach crash in Turkey last year. Haven't read it but it's up near the top of my list.

I don't know much about Jenny Erpenbeck or Sherko Fatah, except that the latter is also very charming and I've briefly met the former's translator, Susan Bernofsky, and found her very down to earth and likeable. This is good news for her.

But the number-one heart-stopping moment for me was reading the name Clemens Meyer on the list, with his new book of short stories. I think he's the most exciting writer in Germany at the moment. I think the whole world should read his books. I think if there were more like him the literary world wouldn't be such a pretentious and at times downright boring place. He reaches the parts other authors cannot reach. He writes about things other authors cannot touch. We're talking wild young men and fucked-up old women, drugs and alcohol and loneliness and friendship. He has lots of tattoos. And a dog, apparently. And his style is so very much his own, lurching through time and place like a lost weekend.

I haven't read the new book yet. I know it will make me even less capable of sleep, but I'll try and give you a blow-by-blow report. And I'm definitely going to the awards ceremony.