It’s packed on Saturday afternoon in the Theater aan het Spui in The Hague. As part of the daytime program of Crossing Border, the 30th edition, the Ukrainian writer Andrey Kurkov will be interviewed. In the hall are many of his compatriots, who were allowed to enter for free. Kurkov is considered the most important writer in his own country and the translation of his Diary of an invasion just rolled off the presses. Kurkov begins his book in December last year, a few months before the Russian attack on his country. In the insightful interview he tells NRC-journalist Michiel Krielaars how he last prepared borshch in peacetime on 24 February in Kyiv and explains how his country is undergoing the war.
It is one of those writers’ interviews that has distinguished Crossing Border for years: topical, inspiring and provoking a book purchase. That is what a large part of the attendees do on Saturday afternoon. Afterwards, a long line forms in front of the signing table.
That day program is also a good idea, especially when such a prominent author as Kurkov turns out to be available. It works better than going to churches or theaters at night, as Crossing Border used to do. This year the evening program took place on Friday and Saturday in the four rooms of the Korzo Theater and nobody had to go through the city. On Friday there were beautiful musical performances by, among others, Robin Kester, who intoxicated the hall with beautifully designed songs, and the very passionate band Hallo Venray. On Saturday we enjoyed the americana of the Delines, a band that seems to have been invented for a festival like Crossing Border, where the cross-pollination between literature and music is central. Singer Amy Boone sang the songs written by the guitarist next to her, Willy Vlautin, who is also known as a gifted author of novels and stories. The story of a pub that Vlautin could see in his office was beautiful, which opened at 7 o’clock already, and inspired him to the melancholy Cheer Up Charley.
The best presentation was Friday by Kees van Kooten (81). He actually never performs again, but was persuaded to come to the jubilee Crossing Border. ‘First I’m going to read, then I’m going to do something fun’, he started his performance in front of a full house. That reading of the story, among other things To Delft, about a childhood cycling adventure, was fun enough. Van Kooten enjoyed himself so much that he amply exceeded the twenty planned minutes and recited a beautiful poem from memory in which his friend Remco Campert, who died this year, also passed by. Suddenly you felt the loneliness of the aging man on stage, who sees his friends slowly disappear from his life. That was touching.
But there was a lot to laugh about at Van Kooten, and elsewhere in Korzo the tone was not always that of serious literature.
This year Crossing Border was partly dominated by the fund of the British publishing house White Rabbit, started three years ago by Lee Brackstone, who has been visiting the festival for 21 years. First in his capacity as editor of Faber publishing house, where he included DBC Pierre’s Vernon God Little brought in. Brackstone’s own publishing house White Rabbit has released many pop culture related books in a short period of time, all of which are worth checking out. He has persuaded and guided many musicians in writing memoirs, and some of them had come with him to Crossing Border.
His conversation with folk singer Vashti Bunyan was beautiful, who told in a lilting, lyrical tone how she led a nomadic life in the sixties and seventies. No, it wasn’t fun, those hippie days. Especially nasty, as she appeared in her memoirs published this year wayward makes clear. She had too many words, the singer concluded, and too little music to pack them in, so she started writing a book.
Also a long line in front of her signing table. No one seemed to leave the festival without books. Very entertaining and witty was also the conversation about the book by the Scottish bandleader of Mogwai, Stuart Braithwaite, who had beautiful anecdotes about how he pretended to be an 18-year-old girl at the age of 14 in order to enter an Iggy Pop concert. .
And though there was for the visitors unfamiliar with Northern English Mancunian The accent is hard to understand, the laughter of former Happy Mondays dancer Bez, who was put to the test by his biographer Andrew Perry, was infectious enough.
Bez has become a TV celebrity in his own country, which is hard to imagine for anyone who saw him brandishing his maracas in Happy Mondays. Witty was his story about Mondays singer Shaun Ryder, who once visited him in the hospital at 4 a.m. and terrified the staff.
And so as a visitor you left the Korzo Theater with a large pile of books and a big grin.
White Rabbit
Founded in 2019 by Lee Brackstone, White Rabbit has quickly become the leading publisher of pop culture books. Although also active in fiction, it is the books of musicians that make White Rabbit unique. The two autobiographical books of Mark Lanegan, who died this year, were published there, as was the autobiography of Bobby Gillespie, of rock band Primal Scream. Also of interest in the fund are new supplemented editions of books that have become classics about Lee Perry (People Funny Boy) and dance (Last Night a DJ Saved My Life).