Alan Raphaeline, "Another Country" Bookshop, Kreuzberg.
June 13 and June 27, 2007
Interview by Dr. Kris Manjapra, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities, UCLA.
Why did you call your store 'Another Country'?
We thought about it for a month, and came up with this name. When people ask where its from, I usually say Marlowe, not Baldwin.
Does it mean that to you?
It doesn't mean Marlowe to me. I think it means something like an 'interzone'. The thing is, it does mean something different if you are an English speaker or a German speaker. If you are a native English speaker, it means that you're going somewhere that's not quite Germany.
Why did you do before you started the bookstore in Britain?
I used to read newspapers, as a job. I would cut out related articles. I would take the most interesting ones and make them into homemade newspapers, and make photocopies and they would go to different clients. Places like oil companies and government ministries.
Were you working for the government?
I went through different incarnations. But mostly, I was working independently.
Did the newspaper you put together contain analysis of the news?
No, but for the kind of job we were doing, we did analyze. One had a to have a good ability to predict. I remember the situation with Marcos in the Philippines. It played out exactly as I thought it would.
You do get used to what info is trustworthy and what's not.
Had you always wanted to start a bookshop?
I worked once in a bookshop in Cambridge. At Charing Cross, people would come in and look to sell their first editions. The whole point was to try to get the books from them for as little money as possible. I remember a woman walked in with a few first edition Kate Greenaways and walked out with 2 pounds! I couldn't believe it! It was such a dishonest job. First of all, we don't see such valuable stuff on a daily basis here. When people come to sell things here, they bring softcovers and hardcovers, but not specialty items.
What do you think of a place such as Dussmann's Kulturhaus?
I think it's limited by a top-down approach. I'm not sure there's any way around that though. There's a great movement in contemporary bookshops to have an area for tea, coffee and discussion. I like the concept, but it certainly matters if you are dealing with a small bookshop or a large one. In the larger ones, there's nothing unique. It's the same coffee and cake you'd get anywhere.
The commercial domain of literature is always a problem. Publishers, distributors and politics affect the sales of books in a number of ways.
Then there's the Amazon problem. Compared to anywhere else, Amazon undersells. There used to be a number of smaller bookshops that used to depend on the Harry Potter sort of book. Today, Amazon can sells these kinds of books at a lower price. I heard a story of a small bookstore outside of Berlin where the owners resorted to going to Dussmanns, buying as many Harry Potters as they could since it was being sold on discount there, and then selling the books for profit back at their store.
What made you move to Germany from Britain?
When I think about my life in London, it involved a lot of newspaper reading. I would read international papers, often during the night. I would get the early editions and then the late ones, and work on them.
I just don't know quite how all this happened. When I haven't completely messed things up, and I try to figure out why, I usually come up with innocence and pure ignorance as my main talents.
How did I end up here? I was genuinely not thinking about it. But maybe Berlin brought something out in me. When English-speakers come to Berlin they sometimes become very outgoing. In an English-speaking environment, these same people might not get the opportunity to be as outgoing. In a German environment, one becomes more extroverted.
Why Berlin, and why Kreuzberg?
We've been going for six/seven years. I used to spend a lot more time traveling. Stockholm, London, Amsterdam. I came here to live and decided to start the bookstore. I came to Germany 4 to 5 years before unification.
I like the neighborhood. This is the first neighborhood I really encountered. I thought this was one of the more reasonably international areas.
Did the idea come to you all at once?
I had ten different ideas. I spent a year looking for premises. They were all different, and were slightly more suitable for certain thing. The space I chose was nice, relatively cheap, and in a good area. It's still annoying I don't have one slightly larger room. Here we can get 25-30 people without enormous trouble.
What kind of clientele do you have?
With the bookshop, there are more English speakers. It would be fifty/fifty if you leave tourists out. People want to read the book in the original language. I remember a woman who came in asking for Ulysses, and her English was not very good. I'm thinking, there's surely some mistake here. 'Do you mean Homer, The Odyssey?', I asked. 'Irish writer,' she said. I was struggling to understand. 'Are you doing it for university,' I asked. She said a friend told her it was the ideal thing to take to Mallorca, I could have just totally destroyed a friendship there.
When you were getting things started, where did you get the books from?
I started off with science fiction and poetry. I began with the books I had. That was about 15,000. There are 25,000 books here. So the collection has grown. People sell books and they give them to us.
Were you OK with selling your prized collection?
This is the thing. I was pretty anal retentive, but was trying to cut over that trait. I thought of the library system idea (in which people loan out books, and just pay a small borrowing fee), but was very unsure about it. But the system is something I'm quite satisfied with now. So I wasn't really getting rid of the anal retentive side after all.
Do you have every book catalogued in some way?
I have to rack my brain and think about who has what. There are a very few books I definitely don't want to sell. I want to get rid of about 1% of the books I have. Ten percent are lending only and they have to come back. Ninety percent can be sold.
Don't some people just not return books?
That's why I charge a lot for Kurt Vonnegut. I've put price increases on his books three time. Personally, I intensely dislike Vonnegut.. Truman Capote's books too. I have no idea why Truman Capote is so popular. Noone seems to be reading Angela Carter!
So what sells the best?
The most successful is philosophy. The least successful are best sellers and thrillers and how-to's. No one likes a secondhand diet book, it can't be any good.
Have you read all the books in your store?
I have a system. It's difficult. But I have had to move from reading every book to not being able to. I did read the Britney Spears book. That's the kind of chance discovery that a bookshelf brings! I'm still waiting for Paris Hilton's.
Why do you like Science Fiction so much?
It's a question of what strategy people use to read. It has to do with peoples aesthetic sense. It's how reading strategies access texts. Reading science fiction is psychologically quite distinct from reading mainstream literature. I see it in terms of logical relations. Science fiction to the world is an if/then relation. If the world changed in this way, and if people could zap each other with phasers, then this is how a whole set of other things would turn out.
Different forms of literature tend to be read in particular ways. They lend themselves to particular kinds of investigation. If you were to take something like gender, then there are more than enough mainstream feminist novels. However, I think science fiction does a far better job with thinking about gender issues. Josephine Saxton publishes in science fiction presses. In terms of a literate expression of these kind of ideas, I see science fiction as much better.
I think there are certain forms of social investigation, which I see crime novels as particularly good at. I think Robert Rankin, who attempts portraits of cities, does excellent social commentary.
What kind of plots are you most attracted to?
I don't know if it has anything to do with being a Brit in Berlin, but I go for things that will have different protagonists from different cultures. I'm more interested in how different cultures meet more than what they are in themselves.
Do you find yourself as a kind of English-speaking diplomat in Berlin?
The first time somebody asked me to translate, I said sure. Six hours later, I said, Oh no! I mean, OK, it's possible to use the word 'architectonic' repeatedly. But it's not as flexible some Germans tend to believe.
And the Germans with the best English accents, and the best English, come out of Bielefeld.
Are there any troubles that come along with being a host?
The problem with having a place like this is that you do attract menaces. At the moment, there are two people who are completely barred. Sometimes you get the people who don't naturally fit in.
Before our Friday evening dinners, I'm doing a lot of cooking throughout the day. By the time things pick up in the evening, I'm often really tired. All I want to do is sit back and listen to the pleasant inconsequential discussion, and let as my thoughts drift away.
I also try to give responsibilities to the people who work with me. We're establishing a Verein (Association), although I'll still be in charge of many of the decisions. At the moment, there are six people who have the key to the store, and I trust them fully even when I'm not here.
Is it all too much?
A feeling of satisfaction comes from coordinating things. People looking for flats, and others needing directions, or people who need help with translation, or even people who need an electrician or a fix-it man come to me. People just ask me if I know people. The main thing is trying to push it all away for me from time to time. The books come from me, the decorations come from me. I'm the person who takes care of finances. I do the pricing. I look for English titles. It's important to find my own space too. I don't have a phone up in my suite.
Are you satisfied with the success your store has had?
In my mind it hasn't really taken off yet. I tend to ignore all the things that are working. I see it as my role to create those things that haven't yet taken shape.