Beth Driscoll and Claire Squires. The Frankfurt Kabuff Critical Edition. Waterloo, ON : Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2023. 274 pages. ISBN 9781771125987. CA $34.39 (paperback).
Four years after releasing their novella, The Frankfurt Kabuff, an erotic thriller set at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Beth Driscoll and Claire Squires (alias Blaire Squiscoll) have published a unique critical edition that supplements their text with materials including scholarly essays, cocktail recipes, discussion questions, and “klopf klopf” (“knock knock”) jokes. Both the novella and critical edition reflect the authors’ research methodology, “Ullapoolism.” Described as “a conceptual school inspired by a trip to the town of Ullapool,” the method (or lack thereof) is characterized by playfulness, satire, presentism and “Oh Look, A Ferry” (that last one can only be understood by reading The Manifesto, which lays out principles and goals, although not with complete clarity or seriousness). As this critical edition of Squiscoll’s novella demonstrates, the authors’ underlying desire to “reinvigorate exhausted modes of critique” is earnest. Although its premise might suggest a lack of seriousness, The Frankfurt Kabuff is a scholarly piece of art—a fact especially underscored by the critical edition’s introduction and accompanying essays. The edition is a playful intervention in publishing studies—a truly bookish book that contains everything readers might like to know about The Frankfurt Kabuff’s origins, authorial and editorial decisions, and marketing process.
The 2019 novella focuses on Beatrice Deft, a stylish Negroni-loving woman who happens to become involved in a sinister plot in which neo-Nazis plan to bomb the Frankfurt Book Fair, or Buchmesse. Together with her new love interest Caspian, a hot German police officer with a “lengthy baton” (p. 52), she manages to defeat the bad guys. In the end, she faces a promising future as an International Publishing Consultant at a left-wing philosophy publisher. The Frankfurt Kabuff is a social critique of the Buchmesse based on the authors’ autoethnographic research during the book fairs (and publishers’ afterparties) from 2017 to 2019. It highlights and satirizes social inequities and political controversies connected with the Buchmesse, including the fair’s decision to allow far-right publishers to exhibit in 2017, which lead to student protests.
A notable addition to the critical edition text are the authors’ footnotes, which explain why Squiscoll made certain stylistic and narrative decisions in ways that explicate both genre conventions and the social and political aspects of the Buchmesse. Included are also several footnotes in which the authors jokingly undermine their own feminist intervention, for instance by saying that feminism is unimportant when it comes to “hot” men: “Squiscoll was concerned with the forward momentum of the plot and the publishing industry and made an error in terms of gender equalities in all professions. But then who doesn’t like a man who is handy with a drill?” (p. 81n9).
The annotated text is followed by fifteen critical essays on the novella and the Frankfurt Book Fair, in which authors discuss the Kabuff’s themes, genre, and sociopolitical issues related to the Buchmesse. The essays range from “Genesis,” in which Kim Wilkins discusses how she helped the authors create a plot for the Kabuff and was inspired by their experimental storytelling, to Leslie Howsam’s essay on Robert Darnton’s communications circuit, whose prevalence in book studies the novella satirizes. One standout is Elizabeth Ezra’s creative and “Ullapoolist” essay, in which she lays the groundwork for “a new field… [called] Hypothetical Film Criticism, or the analysis of the films that books could be but are not” (p. 175). Ezra includes a screenplay of how she imagines the novella adapted into the film musical Kabuff!, translating the story’s main points into an entirely different medium and genre; as she at one point explains, “The dance numbers in the film are fairly conventional, from ‘The Dance of the Foreign Rights,’ which features a succession of co-agents in national dress, to ‘Slush,’ in which an editorial intern skis down a mountain of unsolicited manuscripts as they begin to degrade over time” (p. 180).
The essays are followed by eleven assemblages, which include the original plot diagram for the novella, diary entries detailing the production of their print-on-demand self-published edition of The Frankfurt Kabuff, a conference abstract proposal, a Spotify playlist, and a story in which Beatrice and Caspian meet during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The diary entries recount the authors’ self-publishing journey, documenting the bureaucracy they faced during the undertaking as well as how their book’s first printing turned out to contain misprints and had to be destroyed by Squiscoll.
Concluding this unique book is an equally unique index created by Paula Clarke Bain. It is another humorous piece of art that includes many elements that you would never find in another index. Some examples include the entry for “orientation, unusual,” which is printed from bottom to top, “Fraktur typeface,” which is written in the font in question, and “erasure,” which has been crossed out.
The Frankfurt Kabuff Critical Edition is a collaborative work that does not define what Ullapoolism is but illustrates what it is capable of. Its contributors demonstrate the effectiveness of using creative and humorous scholarship to approach the Frankfurt Book Fair. The book will appeal to a range of audiences. The introduction and essays will be most interesting to academics in the areas of book history and publishing; the diary may interest authors who are considering self-publishing their own books; and the novella, as well as the creative takes on it, provides exciting and humorous reading material for any audience.
Madelon Nanninga, Exter Indexing
