While we are on the subject of the idiocies of the book business there was a very funny article in last Friday’s Le Monde des Livres by Alain Beuve-Méry decoding the things people say at the Frankfurt Book Fair (and based apparently on an anonymous photocopy doing the rounds). The English used there is, he said, un idiome très particulier. For example to describe a book as “literary” means “people might like it but it will be harder to sell”. Worse than this is “experimental” which decoded means “unreadable, difficult to sell, and possibly capable of pleasing a few critics”.

We didn’t hear a lot of Frankfurtspeak, mostly because people are a bit disarmed when you tell them, in all honesty, that you aren’t particularly interested in sales. It’s a bit like that scene in Barry Lyndon where Barry reveals to the Chevalier de Balibari that he’s Irish, if you can imagine rights people as tubby, heavily makeup-ed confidence men with a soft spot for fellow exiles.

Here’s a link to the original , for those of you who have it.

Cross your fingers that the train workers strike doesn’t leave us stranded in the outskirts of Frankfurt.