Michael Krüger (German, 1943, poet, novelist, editor) is Hanser director, a major literary publishers in Europe. His office is in Munich, and is surrounded by paper originals.
front, with its airy windows that we visited in January, there are some magnificent trees that he, a poet of irony and memory, identifies with which we are looking into the future. What about this? That is the crux of the matter now: what will the book as we know, as he thinks, as an author and editor? What is it? It has one of his books of poems most beautiful verses about memory: "Sometimes the child / me sends a postcard." What do you say memory the editor, which sends postcards? Is the line of literary editors have had Europe: Carlos Barral, Roberto Calasso ... So he feels for the text as we have always played an enormous respect, which is the same respect you feel about the passage of time. Of that, the time comes, we wanted to talk to him in this series about the challenges facing the world created by his countryman Gutenberg.
Question. You say in one of his books translated into English: "Go and whether the death was not in their shoes." Sometimes we live as if death had nothing to do with us. And there are the books as we have known. These will die " books?
Response. really good books have a longer life than a man. And that's a strange situation. As the morning sitting in front of a blank paper. But the author a good day to die and the book is still there. That's the fascinating thing about a book that has its own life. And it relates to the author just because his name appears in the book. The strange thing is that everyone, the stupid, the intelligent, the educated and the ignorant, can read a book in different ways. The text has its own life. By the time you publish a book you should know that the book will live, probably more than you as an author. And the only person who will watch over him is the editor. The editor has a duty to keep the book alive even if the author is dead. The only ones still there after the death of the author is the editor and the text. The book is a living organism.
P. And is the reader.
R . The book is always waiting for a reader. If you miss a reader, the book dies. So the editors have a duty to keep it alive. What does this mean? We all know that 90% of the books that were published in 2011 will not survive a year from now. Most of the books you see in the stores have a life of six months. The remaining 10% may have a longer life. Some books, even if are important, they forget. But suddenly, someone comes along, it picks up and says: "This is a work of art, we have to reread it." And many readers may follow this advice. Kafka is a good example. While he lived about 200 pages published. When these 200 pages were published thousand people read it. Thousand people. No one else. However, after the war someone took the book and said: "This book perfectly describes the state of the human condition at the time of the First World War and have to reread it." Today I read people around the world.
P. And in his time, was almost unknown ...
R. While living, nobody cared what Kafka wrote. And the duty of an editor is listening to the music of time ... That music is always looking for someone and the text can be revitalized. For example, published two years ago what I would call the most appropriate translation of Don Quixote. Of course, there were many translations into German, about 10 or 15. However, here today think their allegories might raise interest they may have a new reading. We thought it would be interesting to read now, at this historical moment, capitalist, European, in which there are many new struggles against windmills. The interesting thing is that the new translation was highly successful. But we did not expect was that the metaphorical and allegorical situation, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, fit so perfectly with the situation. The editor has to know that a book, even if 500 years, may have a new life. Imagine Hamlet now ...
P. is that the human condition is always the same ...
R. Right. And does not change rapidly. The life span of a human being is very short. Being so short, one should read good books out there. And the editor has to know what books, past and present, "actually may interest the reader disoriented. In recent years we have undergone many changes, in our notions about the world, about our existence, about politics, about the European Union. People have changed so much has changed so much thought. That's what they have to take into account political, that everything is different, and maybe the authors are feeling better than them. Each country has its perpetrators, we must be attentive to what they write, but also political. I think the mentality is described correctly only in the literature. Until the fifties of last century, people only had the literature to understand other worlds. Now we have other mechanisms. To learn how we are. But we read the literature if we really want to know what the mentality people.
P. You said your job is to revive dead books. In the case of current books, how is the selection process? When you know a writer, as Gertrude Stein would have said, is a writer-is-a-writer?
R. This gives you experience. I think many of today's editors do not read. They are so immersed in reading and read the contemporary reports on books they no longer read for pleasure. They are no longer passionate readers. And 80% or 90% of books published next year will disappear. Clear that we must feed and nurture the writer, so the machine has to work. But the machine has nothing to do with the person sitting alone writing. The work of writing: that is what fascinates me. And that never changed. There remains a writer sitting at the table in front of a blank paper. The writing process has nothing to do with the machine. Only that the infrastructure is improved to the writer, but nothing more.
P. In one of your books you say that the future is a joke. Can we talk about the future as if it were a joke?
R. If you're my age, 67 years, of course you can talk about the future with a sense of humor. Nobody could predict the global crisis we are experiencing. Even people with a high level of education, money, culture. Nobody. Nobody thought there would be a reunion in Germany. No one thought we were going to rise in Africa. Nobody thought that Facebook was going to change society. 20 years ago nobody thought that people were going to walk down the street with a mobile phone. It used to be content to read a morning newspaper. Today there are people who are not satisfied unless it receives 15 newspapers a day on your computer. In the end I sit and watch the tree and the house that I have before. And I will die with that tree in front of my eyes.
P. Many changes. And how will affect the reading?
R. affect our very existence. This means that now we live no one has time. It is very common to hear it. I have no time! If you use even a very short period of time to read what you are removing trash to a reading of a poem by Gongora. The more junk you'll have less time for you. It is a paradoxical situation: listening to people say they have no time. Just because you have it! And, of course, in this swing reading is impaired. Because you can read faster. A Proust can not be read in less than three months. And that makes the machine get angry. The machine you just want a person to read Proust in two days. The machine think of creating shorter formats, abstracts, comic strips ... What is happening reminds me of a quote from Woody Allen, after reading Dostoevsky asked about the book and said: "All I can say is that it is Russian." The reading is totally contrary to this acceleration. At this rate. Anything can adapt itself to this pace, but not reading.
P. "these changes also will affect the writing? How about publishers?
R . I just returned from New York, where I said that now 35% of the books will be available in e-book. That percentage may rise. The e-book is cheaper, requires no paper, forests are happy. This also means you can store hundreds of books on your computer, you do not need physical space for storage. I think all that is greatly affecting the publishing world. Small bookstores are closing. In five years I will have to reorganize our way of working. I need more people to monitor electronic auctions, which promote the books through social networks. They will have to get into blogs. The script now has to do with putting an idea into an electronic universe. The idea is faster than the book. When someone succeeded in 1858 a mathematical solution to a problem, that news traveled slowly to be approved and adopted. Now in eight minutes you can share a mathematical solution with the world.
P. And the publishers will continue to be the guardians of the books?
R. 20 years from now will still editors. Maybe not as many as today, but many will survive. The market itself is shrinking. The circulation of books is shrinking and the cost is increasing. Within 10 or 20 years, a book will be worth too much for a young reader. Instead of buying a book is printed Shakespeare's sonnets directly. And this brings us to the issue of copyright. This is the big problem. Most books and information available in a library you can get online. One is paid or pirated. If the willingness to buy a book disappears the book disappears. And the same happened to the publishing industry. I do not know how it will be in Spain, but here the authors are touring with his books and give talks. If they can give 14 lectures a year reach the public and earn enough to live on that, other than what they get from sales.
P. are troubadours.
R. And in that role of minstrel, the author can sell his books in a personal and intimate. And this is a bull market here. Is an event, and if the author manages to convey and be a good speaker, can succeed.
P. Does that change the relationship between author and publisher?
R. I spend much time with the authors because I love that. I am interested in being around them. The process of writing is still fascinating to me as my work. What comes next, sell the book, is made as transparent as possible and try to make the writer understand what we do. Günter Grass remember I said that all he needed was a table and paper. And I asked: do you know how worth the paper? Do you know how much is an ad in THE COUNTRY? And did not know. Most writers do not know how market works and it is our duty to let them know. I think the solution is to strengthen ties with the author. Not exist without the author.
P. When reading a manuscript, what is it that convinces him to post?
R. Seeking learn. If I read a novel, for example, want to learn something about how to write something about the subject matter, or want to feed what I call "my batteries of pleasure." If I learn nothing, not the public. That is my priority: to learn, have pleasure. Last night I read until two in the morning because today I had to make a decision. If you do not learn anything, do not publish what I read. Of course there are publishers who are only interested in publishing in view the commercial. When reading do not read to read but they read to see if it meets the appropriate commercial ingredients ... Samuel Pepys said: "I do not want to die because I have to read 400 books. I want to die when you read them all." Is heroic what he says Pepys. But I am content to believe that until the last moment of my life I have books to read.
P. you have very beautiful verses about children, "Sometimes I send a postcard." If you could write to the child who was a postcard on what is going to find, what would?
R. say that if you have to choose between the world of books and field world to choose the world of field, forest, fleeing the city. Or go to Athens or stay on the field.
Juan Cruz
The Country
April 3, 2011
***
front, with its airy windows that we visited in January, there are some magnificent trees that he, a poet of irony and memory, identifies with which we are looking into the future. What about this? That is the crux of the matter now: what will the book as we know, as he thinks, as an author and editor? What is it? It has one of his books of poems most beautiful verses about memory: "Sometimes the child / me sends a postcard." What do you say memory the editor, which sends postcards? Is the line of literary editors have had Europe: Carlos Barral, Roberto Calasso ... So he feels for the text as we have always played an enormous respect, which is the same respect you feel about the passage of time. Of that, the time comes, we wanted to talk to him in this series about the challenges facing the world created by his countryman Gutenberg.
Question. You say in one of his books translated into English: "Go and whether the death was not in their shoes." Sometimes we live as if death had nothing to do with us. And there are the books as we have known. These will die " books?
Response. really good books have a longer life than a man. And that's a strange situation. As the morning sitting in front of a blank paper. But the author a good day to die and the book is still there. That's the fascinating thing about a book that has its own life. And it relates to the author just because his name appears in the book. The strange thing is that everyone, the stupid, the intelligent, the educated and the ignorant, can read a book in different ways. The text has its own life. By the time you publish a book you should know that the book will live, probably more than you as an author. And the only person who will watch over him is the editor. The editor has a duty to keep the book alive even if the author is dead. The only ones still there after the death of the author is the editor and the text. The book is a living organism.
P. And is the reader.
R . The book is always waiting for a reader. If you miss a reader, the book dies. So the editors have a duty to keep it alive. What does this mean? We all know that 90% of the books that were published in 2011 will not survive a year from now. Most of the books you see in the stores have a life of six months. The remaining 10% may have a longer life. Some books, even if are important, they forget. But suddenly, someone comes along, it picks up and says: "This is a work of art, we have to reread it." And many readers may follow this advice. Kafka is a good example. While he lived about 200 pages published. When these 200 pages were published thousand people read it. Thousand people. No one else. However, after the war someone took the book and said: "This book perfectly describes the state of the human condition at the time of the First World War and have to reread it." Today I read people around the world.
P. And in his time, was almost unknown ...
R. While living, nobody cared what Kafka wrote. And the duty of an editor is listening to the music of time ... That music is always looking for someone and the text can be revitalized. For example, published two years ago what I would call the most appropriate translation of Don Quixote. Of course, there were many translations into German, about 10 or 15. However, here today think their allegories might raise interest they may have a new reading. We thought it would be interesting to read now, at this historical moment, capitalist, European, in which there are many new struggles against windmills. The interesting thing is that the new translation was highly successful. But we did not expect was that the metaphorical and allegorical situation, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, fit so perfectly with the situation. The editor has to know that a book, even if 500 years, may have a new life. Imagine Hamlet now ...
P. is that the human condition is always the same ...
R. Right. And does not change rapidly. The life span of a human being is very short. Being so short, one should read good books out there. And the editor has to know what books, past and present, "actually may interest the reader disoriented. In recent years we have undergone many changes, in our notions about the world, about our existence, about politics, about the European Union. People have changed so much has changed so much thought. That's what they have to take into account political, that everything is different, and maybe the authors are feeling better than them. Each country has its perpetrators, we must be attentive to what they write, but also political. I think the mentality is described correctly only in the literature. Until the fifties of last century, people only had the literature to understand other worlds. Now we have other mechanisms. To learn how we are. But we read the literature if we really want to know what the mentality people.
P. You said your job is to revive dead books. In the case of current books, how is the selection process? When you know a writer, as Gertrude Stein would have said, is a writer-is-a-writer?
R. This gives you experience. I think many of today's editors do not read. They are so immersed in reading and read the contemporary reports on books they no longer read for pleasure. They are no longer passionate readers. And 80% or 90% of books published next year will disappear. Clear that we must feed and nurture the writer, so the machine has to work. But the machine has nothing to do with the person sitting alone writing. The work of writing: that is what fascinates me. And that never changed. There remains a writer sitting at the table in front of a blank paper. The writing process has nothing to do with the machine. Only that the infrastructure is improved to the writer, but nothing more.
P. In one of your books you say that the future is a joke. Can we talk about the future as if it were a joke?
R. If you're my age, 67 years, of course you can talk about the future with a sense of humor. Nobody could predict the global crisis we are experiencing. Even people with a high level of education, money, culture. Nobody. Nobody thought there would be a reunion in Germany. No one thought we were going to rise in Africa. Nobody thought that Facebook was going to change society. 20 years ago nobody thought that people were going to walk down the street with a mobile phone. It used to be content to read a morning newspaper. Today there are people who are not satisfied unless it receives 15 newspapers a day on your computer. In the end I sit and watch the tree and the house that I have before. And I will die with that tree in front of my eyes.
P. Many changes. And how will affect the reading?
R. affect our very existence. This means that now we live no one has time. It is very common to hear it. I have no time! If you use even a very short period of time to read what you are removing trash to a reading of a poem by Gongora. The more junk you'll have less time for you. It is a paradoxical situation: listening to people say they have no time. Just because you have it! And, of course, in this swing reading is impaired. Because you can read faster. A Proust can not be read in less than three months. And that makes the machine get angry. The machine you just want a person to read Proust in two days. The machine think of creating shorter formats, abstracts, comic strips ... What is happening reminds me of a quote from Woody Allen, after reading Dostoevsky asked about the book and said: "All I can say is that it is Russian." The reading is totally contrary to this acceleration. At this rate. Anything can adapt itself to this pace, but not reading.
P. "these changes also will affect the writing? How about publishers?
R . I just returned from New York, where I said that now 35% of the books will be available in e-book. That percentage may rise. The e-book is cheaper, requires no paper, forests are happy. This also means you can store hundreds of books on your computer, you do not need physical space for storage. I think all that is greatly affecting the publishing world. Small bookstores are closing. In five years I will have to reorganize our way of working. I need more people to monitor electronic auctions, which promote the books through social networks. They will have to get into blogs. The script now has to do with putting an idea into an electronic universe. The idea is faster than the book. When someone succeeded in 1858 a mathematical solution to a problem, that news traveled slowly to be approved and adopted. Now in eight minutes you can share a mathematical solution with the world.
P. And the publishers will continue to be the guardians of the books?
R. 20 years from now will still editors. Maybe not as many as today, but many will survive. The market itself is shrinking. The circulation of books is shrinking and the cost is increasing. Within 10 or 20 years, a book will be worth too much for a young reader. Instead of buying a book is printed Shakespeare's sonnets directly. And this brings us to the issue of copyright. This is the big problem. Most books and information available in a library you can get online. One is paid or pirated. If the willingness to buy a book disappears the book disappears. And the same happened to the publishing industry. I do not know how it will be in Spain, but here the authors are touring with his books and give talks. If they can give 14 lectures a year reach the public and earn enough to live on that, other than what they get from sales.
P. are troubadours.
R. And in that role of minstrel, the author can sell his books in a personal and intimate. And this is a bull market here. Is an event, and if the author manages to convey and be a good speaker, can succeed.
P. Does that change the relationship between author and publisher?
R. I spend much time with the authors because I love that. I am interested in being around them. The process of writing is still fascinating to me as my work. What comes next, sell the book, is made as transparent as possible and try to make the writer understand what we do. Günter Grass remember I said that all he needed was a table and paper. And I asked: do you know how worth the paper? Do you know how much is an ad in THE COUNTRY? And did not know. Most writers do not know how market works and it is our duty to let them know. I think the solution is to strengthen ties with the author. Not exist without the author.
P. When reading a manuscript, what is it that convinces him to post?
R. Seeking learn. If I read a novel, for example, want to learn something about how to write something about the subject matter, or want to feed what I call "my batteries of pleasure." If I learn nothing, not the public. That is my priority: to learn, have pleasure. Last night I read until two in the morning because today I had to make a decision. If you do not learn anything, do not publish what I read. Of course there are publishers who are only interested in publishing in view the commercial. When reading do not read to read but they read to see if it meets the appropriate commercial ingredients ... Samuel Pepys said: "I do not want to die because I have to read 400 books. I want to die when you read them all." Is heroic what he says Pepys. But I am content to believe that until the last moment of my life I have books to read.
P. you have very beautiful verses about children, "Sometimes I send a postcard." If you could write to the child who was a postcard on what is going to find, what would?
R. say that if you have to choose between the world of books and field world to choose the world of field, forest, fleeing the city. Or go to Athens or stay on the field.
Juan Cruz
The Country
April 3, 2011
***
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