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Horace Bent Bent’s Notes
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Bent’s Notes Horace Bent @horacebent
Queuing for hours to procure a lime and (slimline) tonic, Horace was able to eavesdrop on revellers debating the Booker and Nobel’s recent generosity
Are you being served? Horace hits the Hof...
ld habits die hard. Especially for Anna Valentine, the mover, shaker and Bookseller Rising Star who for the past three years has run Trapeze, her own imprint at Orion. That is a Hachete company, by the way. Let us just reiterate that: it is a Hachette company.
Pictured The bar queue at Frankfurter Hof last night, which prompted Horace to contemplate using his emergency signal flare
Battling bulky Americans who don’t know about the sanctity of the queue... I briefly thought that a signal flare would help
So yesterday she marched confidently on to the stand, hanging up her coat in the back room. She sat at a table, ready for business, perhaps thinking: “Oh, yeah, the Frankfurt Motherflippin’ Book Fair, day one. It. Is. On. Bitchez.” Then Charlie Redmayne walked over to say hello, and suddenly Valentine realised she was at the stand of HarperCollins—her former employer. No word yet if she is still there, or if she’s moved down the hall to Stand D95. Speaking of old habits, like most of Anglophone publishing, I was at the Frankfurter Hof last night. As I was in the vicious scrum at the bar, batling bulky Americans who don’t know about the sanctit of the queue, and trying in vain to catch the eye of the slow moving staff—I briefly thought that a signal flare would help—I wondered: why was I there? Not in an existential way, I stress. More accurately: why was I there? Why do FBF-goers congregate at a place with all the soul of an investment bank’s reception? Which cruel despot decided that we should go there? And why do we keep going? This is not just a Frankfurt phenomenon. At Bologna, the lovely “Fat Cit” full of amazing wine bars and tratorias, British publishing swarms to the down- at-heel but rather aptly named S’wine Bar. Here, at least, I know
who to blame: the Irish. Specifically, Knights Of’s David Stevens and Easons’ David O’Callaghan, who by force of will and bags of charm managed to convince all of children’s publishing that the S’wine is the place to be. Shame on you, gentlemen. Still, the Frankfurter Hof queues meant
there was time to chew the fat on the big question: who has had a worse week, the Booker or Nobel? Well, the optics of having someone who was a big fan of war criminal Slobodan Milosevic as your winner is not, you know, ideal. But most thought the Booker fudge was, in fact, worse. But I’m glad for the split. Even geting half an award for an up-and-coming writer means a lot. This Margaret Atwood will go far. You heard it here first.
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10 17th October 2019
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CO-BOOKER WINNERS: FUDGE, OR FUN?
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