Horace Bent: It’s all so quiet, so let the FBF party begin…

The Germans famously have a compound word for everything. About a decade ago, miscellany man Ben Schott even had a bestselling humour book about them, Schottenfreude, the biggest German hit in Britain since (no, stop, Horace, don’t go there…). But I thought of a good compound waiting for my inevitably delayed Heathrow-to-Manhattan am Main flight. First, I know what you are thinking, “Horace, you never fly cattle class.” True but, alas, I lent the Gulfstream (a.k.a. Bent Force One) and my Balenciaga gift card to Keir Starmer, which he may or may not claim in his next register of members’ interests reports.

Anywho, there I was in the Terminal 2 W H Smith doing the UK’s current Super Thursday week bookshop parlour game: putting copies of Miranda Hart’s I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest with You, Elif Batuman’s The Idiot and Clare Mackinosh’s A Game of Lies in the display of Boris “I cured Covid” Johnson’s memoir. 

But what I was really doing is what we all do on these Frankfurt to-and-fro flights: completely blanking other folk from the book trade, praying they are not sitting next to me and that we won’t have to share a taxi from the Flughafen. Well, if I’m paying for the taxi, that is. Let’s call this “Gasbeleuchtungbuchmesse” (book fair gaslighting).

Because Pushkin Press head honcho Adam Freudenheim and I locked eyes and then glanced away from each other. Both of us presumably with the same thought: “Jeez Louise, I’m not even two Pret macchiatos deep yet; I can’t form a thought let alone speak to anyone.” Although, who knows, he may have been busy and genuinely did not notice me, perhaps rifling through the shelves for a copy of the Pushkin-published The Maniac by Benjamín Labatut to add to the BoJo display. (Airport WHSs are famously replete with haunting stories of Hungarian polymaths in translation).  

Sam “the Stan Getz of the LitAg” Edenborough did not notice me either, but he can be excused as he purchased three rows of seats to have enough room to safely transport his saxophone for the much-anticipated Editorial Standards gig this week. I’ve heard tell that the rights trading supergroup has been practising incessantly for the past few months, and it promises a flawless performance at this fair which I think, owing to demand, has been transferred to Eintracht Frankfurt’s stadium.  

I’ve also heard a few whispers that 360 was going to be big at this fair, which may be referring to that HarperCollins’ global publishing platform (beloved by all agents!), but I think it actually refers to the Charli XCX banger, and I’ve been spreading the rumour that she’ll be appearing with the Editorial Standards.  

But can we have a sense check, meine Freunde? Maybe it’s just me but it just seems a wee bit quiet in the old Messe this year. I mean, I expected a bit of a muted FBF 2024; the Guest of Honour after all is Italy, a nation renowned for its taciturnity. But the big publishers’ stands are slimmed down on an Ozempic scale and there seem to be fewer parties (though, of course, I have been banned from some). But that said, I haven’t yet tried to navigate the Frankfurter Hof bars. Things may change by tomorrow’s edition…