As you wander through the booths at the Book Fair this fall, the experience may seem mundane as the event is well-organized and almost institutionalized. However, this was not always the case. In the mid-1980s, Conny Jacobsson, a man with some madness, founded the Book Fair in Gothenburg with Bertil Falck. Falck brought confidence and experience, while Jacobsson brought enthusiasm and spontaneity. They were able to attract the Nobel laureate Isaac B Singer to the fair, which was not even open to the public in 1985. The Book Fair is now in its 39th year, thanks in part to Jacobsson and Falck.
Jacobsson was not confined to the Book Fair and his other ventures included managing libraries and starting companies that sold computer systems and antiquarian shops. Jacobsson’s ideas, while sometimes controversial, were always original and successful. He eventually left Sweden for West Africa where he continued to do business until he died recently.
If you want to bring some madness and limitlessness back into the Book Fair this year, take a moment to appreciate the legacy of Conny Jacobsson, the man who always looked forward to new opportunities.
When you are once again pushed around among the booths at the Book Fair this fall, the experience can feel obvious. Sure, it’s a bit messy and noisy, but still so well-organized, so well-oiled, almost institutionalized, isn’t it?
Well, once it wasn’t like that. Once, in the mid-1980s, a Book Fair in Gothenburg was such a strange and crazy idea that it took a man with some madness to pull it off. That man was Conny Jacobsson.
Together with Bertil Falck, he founded the Book Fair. Falck was confident and experienced, Jacobsson was enthusiastic and spontaneous, ready to strike and lively. They became a radar couple, who, for example, managed the feat of luring the Nobel laureate Isaac B Singer to a completely unknown fair, which in 1985 was not even open to the public, but a trade meeting for librarians.
It continued on that path, so successfully that the Book Fair is being organized this year for the 39th time. The book fair became Conny Jacobsson’s most enduring idea, largely thanks to his partner Falck staying and developing the company. The fair would never have become a long-distance runner without Falck, but also never started without Jacobsson.
The book fair was not Conny Jacobsson’s first or last grand idea, nor was it the craziest.
He accidentally slipped into the Library College in Borås in the 1970s. Since the reform with public libraries had just been implemented, many of the newly started libraries in the countryside were crying out for managers, and so Conny Jacobsson was able to land the job as library manager in Hagfors in Värmland directly after his training as a librarian. When he realized that many residents did not even know where the community library was, he had a large helium balloon tied to the roof for all to see. In a storm the balloon tore and sailed over the Värmland forests. For several days the local radio reported where the balloon was last sighted. Jacobsson’s first PR success was a fact.
The book fair was not Conny Jacobsson’s first or last grand idea, nor was it the craziest.
A few years later, he flew around Hagfors together with the youth writer Hans-Eric Hellberg in a propeller plane, from where he dropped small parachutes with paperbacks to the citizens. The library in Hagfors soon had Sweden’s highest lending statistics.
Conny Jacobsson was not a trustee. His impatience and sense of adventure lured him away from the Book Fair after just a few years. He started companies that sold computer systems to libraries. He challenged the role of Library Services as book supplier to the same library. He started an antiquarian shop. And a ticket booking company. He bought a fairground in Örebro. His business and ideas were sometimes chalk white, sometimes in a gray area and in the end also over the line of the legal, mostly because administration was not Jacobsson’s main branch. In the end, this led to Conny Jacobsson leaving Sweden for West Africa. He lived in Mauritania, in Western Sahara and in recent years in Guinea Bissau, where he continued to do business, and where he died after a period of illness on March 31.
I have always felt that life is close when I am balancing on a knife edge between heaven and hell.
Conny Jacobsson was a never-resting entrepreneur and a living artist who always looked ahead, towards new opportunities. If he had chosen to stay in Sweden, and in the cultural industry, he would have been a thinker and a spur of ideas who was constantly invited to panel debates and stage conversations. But as a former colleague said: “It doesn’t suit Conny to be number two. He’d rather be number one in Guinea Bissau than number two in Gothenburg.”
He himself commented on his life in West Africa like this: “It may seem very different compared to dusting library shelves in Hagfors. But I’ve always felt that life is close when I’m balancing on a knife edge between heaven and hell. It was a bit like that when it was most exciting at the Book Fair. I am good at solving problems.”
His whims and ideas could be brilliant, but sometimes also made life difficult for relatives, friends and colleagues. Anyone looking for someone who has something negative to say about Conny Jacobsson is still looking in vain. With warmth, enthusiasm and a slightly stuttering Western Gothic, he was able to win most people over to his side.
If in September you experience the Book Fair as too tidy and thoroughly professionalized – do something that upsets the order! If you find traces of madness and limitlessness – thank Conny!
Ulf Roosvald is editor of Göteborgs-Posten’s weekend magazine Två Dagar and author of “The Book on the Book Fair”, which was published in connection with the fair’s 25th anniversary in 2009.
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