{"id":5778,"date":"2024-08-26T18:14:06","date_gmt":"2024-08-26T22:14:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/?p=5778"},"modified":"2025-10-01T09:39:45","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T13:39:45","slug":"beth-driscoll-and-claire-squires-the-frankfurt-kabuff-critical-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/2024\/08\/26\/beth-driscoll-and-claire-squires-the-frankfurt-kabuff-critical-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Beth Driscoll and Claire Squires. The Frankfurt Kabuff Critical Edition.<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Beth Driscoll and Claire Squires. The Frankfurt Kabuff Critical Edition.<\/em><\/h1>\n\n
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Madelon Nanninga<\/a><\/div>\n\n
in <\/span>Book review<\/a>, <\/span>Reviews<\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\"Cover<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Beth Driscoll and Claire Squires. The Frankfurt Kabuff Critical Edition<\/em>. Waterloo, ON : Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2023. 274 pages. ISBN 9781771125987. CA $34.39 (paperback).<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Four years after releasing their novella, The Frankfurt Kabuff<\/em>, 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 \u201cklopf klopf\u201d (\u201cknock knock\u201d) jokes. Both the novella and critical edition reflect the authors\u2019 research methodology, \u201cUllapoolism.\u201d Described as \u201ca conceptual school inspired by a trip to the town of Ullapool,\u201d the method (or lack thereof) is characterized by playfulness, satire, presentism and \u201cOh Look, A Ferry\u201d (that last one can only be understood by reading The Manifesto<\/a>, which lays out principles and goals, although not with complete clarity or seriousness). As this critical edition of Squiscoll\u2019s novella demonstrates, the authors\u2019 underlying desire to \u201creinvigorate exhausted modes of critique\u201d is earnest. Although its premise might suggest a lack of seriousness, The Frankfurt Kabuff<\/em> is a scholarly piece of art\u2014a fact especially underscored by the critical edition\u2019s introduction and accompanying essays. The edition is a playful intervention in publishing studies\u2014a truly bookish book that contains everything readers might like to know about The Frankfurt Kabuff<\/em>\u2019s origins, authorial and editorial decisions, and marketing process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u201clengthy baton\u201d (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 <\/em>is a social critique of the Buchmesse based on the authors\u2019 autoethnographic research during the book fairs (and publishers\u2019 afterparties) from 2017 to 2019. It highlights and satirizes social inequities and political controversies connected with the Buchmesse, including the fair\u2019s decision to allow far-right publishers to exhibit in 2017, which lead to student protests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A notable addition to the critical edition text are the authors\u2019 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 \u201chot\u201d men: \u201cSquiscoll 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\u2019t like a man who is handy with a drill?\u201d (p. 81n9).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The annotated text is followed by fifteen critical essays on the novella and the Frankfurt Book Fair, in which authors discuss the Kabuff<\/em>\u2019s themes, genre, and sociopolitical issues related to the Buchmesse. The essays range from \u201cGenesis,\u201d in which Kim Wilkins discusses how she helped the authors create a plot for the Kabuff<\/em> and was inspired by their experimental storytelling, to Leslie Howsam\u2019s essay on Robert Darnton\u2019s communications circuit, whose prevalence in book studies the novella satirizes. One standout is Elizabeth Ezra\u2019s creative and \u201cUllapoolist\u201d essay, in which she lays the groundwork for \u201ca new field\u2026 [called] Hypothetical Film Criticism, or the analysis of the films that books could be but are not\u201d (p. 175). Ezra includes a screenplay of how she imagines the novella adapted into the film musical Kabuff!, translating the story\u2019s main points into an entirely different medium and genre; as she at one point explains, \u201cThe dance numbers in the film are fairly conventional, from \u2018The Dance of the Foreign Rights,\u2019 which features a succession of co-agents in national dress, to \u2018Slush,\u2019 in which an editorial intern skis down a mountain of unsolicited manuscripts as they begin to degrade over time\u201d (p. 180).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/em>, 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\u2019 self-publishing journey, documenting the bureaucracy they faced during the undertaking as well as how their book\u2019s first printing turned out to contain misprints and had to be destroyed by Squiscoll.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u201corientation, unusual,\u201d which is printed from bottom to top, \u201cFraktur typeface,\u201d which is written in the font in question, and \u201cerasure,\u201d which has been crossed out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Frankfurt Kabuff Critical Edition<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Madelon Nanninga, Exter Indexing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 this unique critical edition. Although its premise might suggest a lack of seriousness, The Frankfurt Kabuff Critical Edition is a scholarly piece of art.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5784,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"wp-custom-template-post-template-reviews","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1888,1887],"tags":[1909,1943,1953],"class_list":["post-5778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","category-reviews","tag-book-trade","tag-novels","tag-publishing"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5778"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5918,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5778\/revisions\/5918"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}