Trafika Europe 11 - Swiss Delights

The Infinite Book

when it would no longer be enough to bring one’s book and preside over the television shows. Writers were going to have to do more to command attention: they would have to roll up their sleeves and pitch in. Offer lessons in schools. Teach dunces how to read and write. Write pieces every day for journals that would sooner or later be used to wipe one’s boots. Organize soirées around their books and come up with clever tricks to turn them into a welcoming bit of theater. Éden Fels was right: a lot of writers were off on tour for two or three months. They showed up in all sorts of places. He, at any rate, didn’t need this. His name was written on every screen. Any time a writer was mentioned in a review, the critic also referred to Éden Fels. He was a sort of gold standard for authors. The literary world could be divided into two phases: before Fels / with Fels. To be sure, other authors would come and with them, new divisions. Nothing is permanent in this world. But that, for the moment, was the way things were. Although he was invisible, or perhaps precisely because of his invisibility, Jenna’s husband was the center. As for Larsen Frol, he often went out on tours. He liked to play all the roles, even those he had never learned. His performances were disheveled affairs in which the book got lost in the décor and at the end of which, the spectators couldn’t quite describe what they had seen. Sometimes they went on for four hours,

199