Participatory Event / “The Book Handling Agency: The Berlin Session,” with Michel Chaouli, Jeff Dolven, Merve Emre, Tom McCarthy, and company
Date: 12 July 2026, 6:30–8 pm
Location: Books of Others, back room of Barettino Bar, Reuterstr. 59, 12047 Berlin (map)
Co-presented with Books of Others
Please join us for an evening with New York’s fabled Book Handling Agency, an organization whose roster of scholars and writers are trained to transform your unread books into artifacts that will stand as monuments to your cultural erudition and discernment.
The agency brings to life Irish author Flann O’Brien’s 1941 satirical proposal for a service that would make any unread book appear as if “its owner has practically lived, supped, and slept with it for many months.” O’Brien imagined that the service would be of most value to wealthy people who have purchased large numbers of books in order to appear well-read. But we, of course, know that every library contains books that, despite best intentions, have not been—and, perhaps, never will be—read.
The Book Handling Agency is your one-stop solution to this dilemma. Bring an unread book from your library, and let our expert book handlers not only distress it outwardly but also add internal signs of devoted reading, ranging from judicious underlining to marginalia so clever that you will be eager to lend it to friends. Your professionally handled book will broadcast your intellectual acumen for the rest of your life, and down through the ages.
New York City is home to so many unread books that the agency is rarely able to bring its invaluable services to other locations. This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in Berlin is not to be missed.
Please consult the below price list for both à la carte handling and cost-saving package options. The agency will donate all proceeds from this event to the non-profit publisher Cabinet, who have housed the agency gratis at their Brooklyn headquarters since its inception.
The agency also offers private book handling sessions. Inquiries should be directed to thebookhandlingagency@immaterial.net.
PRICES
Kindly note that the agency can only accept cash when abroad.
| Breaking the spine | €1 |
| Multicreasing and mauling the spine | €3 |
| Inserting commonplace page marker (grocery list, train ticket, ticket to musical, etc.) | €1 per insert |
| Inserting culturally sophisticated page marker (bookstore receipt, ticket to museum or theater, classical music program, etc.) | €3 per insert |
| Staining pages with cheap wine, coffee, tea, etc. | €2 per stain |
| Staining pages with expensive wine, port, whiskey, etc. | €5 per stain |
| Scholastic dog-earing of pages | €1 for two |
| Underlining in high-quality red ink | €1 per passage |
| Adding arbitrary marginalia from agency’s famed collection of discerning stock phrases | €2 per note |
| Adding contextually appropriate marginalia from agency’s famed collection of discerning stock phrases | €3 per note |
| Adding custom scholarly marginalia | €5 per note |
| Adding forged signature of author | €3 |
| Adding forged message of affection and gratitude from the author | €6 |
| Marking with agency seal | complimentary with service |
PACKAGES
All packages include complimentary marking with agency seal.
| Essential Handling Package: Includes breaking the spine, 1 commonplace page marker, 4 scholastic dog-ears, 3 underlined passages, and 1 arbitrary stock phrase written in margins | €5 (45% discount) |
| Premier Handling Package: Includes multicreasing and mauling the spine, 1 culturally sophisticated page marker, 1 stain with cheap wine, 6 scholastic dog-ears, 4 underlined passages, and 2 arbitrary stock phrases written in margins | €10 (45% discount) |
| Deluxe Handling Package: Includes multicreasing and mauling the spine, 1 culturally sophisticated page marker, 1 stain with cheap wine, 8 scholastic dog-ears, 6 underlined passages, and 3 contextually appropriate stock phrases written in margins | €15 (45% discount) |
| Superb Handling Package: Includes multicreasing and mauling the spine, 1 culturally sophisticated page marker, 1 stain with expensive wine, 10 scholastic dog-ears, 4 underlined passages, 2 arbitrary stock phrases written in margins, 3 custom scholarly notes written in margins, and 1 forged message of affection and gratitude from the author | €20 (55% discount) |
About the Participants
Michel Chaouli teaches German and comparative literature at Indiana University. He is the author of The Laboratory of Poetry: Chemistry and Poetics in the Work of Friedrich Schlegel (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002; German translation 2004), Thinking with Kant’s Critique of Judgment (Harvard University Press, 2017), and Something Speaks to Me: Where Criticism Begins (University of Chicago Press; German translation forthcoming).
Jeff Dolven teaches poetry and poetics at Princeton University. He is the author of Scenes of Instruction in Renaissance Romance (University of Chicago Press, 2007), Senses of Style: Poetry Before Interpretation (University of Chicago Press, 2018), and the admittedly hasty Take Care (Cabinet Books, 2017), as well as two books of poems, Speculative Music (Sarabande, 2013) and *A New English Grammar (Dispersed Holdings, 2022). He is an editor-at-large at Cabinet.
Merve Emre teaches creative writing and criticism at Wesleyan University and directs the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism. She is the author of The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing (Doubleday, 2018), Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America (The University of Chicago Press, 2018), and The Ferrante Letters: An Experiment in Collective Criticism (Columbia University Press, 2020). She is currently completing Post-Discipline: Two Futures for Literary Study and writing a new book, Love and Other Useless Pursuits.
Tom McCarthy is a novelist whose work has been translated into more than twenty languages and adapted for cinema, theater, and radio. In 2013, he was awarded the inaugural Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction. His books include Remainder (Metronome Press 2005), Tintin and the Secret of Literature (Granta 2006), C (Knopf /Jonathan Cape 2010), Satin Island (Knopf / Jonathan Cape 2015), and The Making of Incarnation (Knopf / Jonathan Cape 2021). His new novel, The Rhyl Poster (NYRB / Jonathan Cape 2026) will appear this fall.