Bookworm

Published on 15/09/2012 03:39

Few spectacles are as dispiriting as an author petulantly bad-mouthing one of his peers: when the target of their ire is recently dead, it becomes positively pitiable.

Such etiquette has not prevented Bret Easton Ellis – once known as the literary bad-boy behind American Psycho, more recently for being overlooked despite his desperate pleading to be the screenwriter for the movie of Fifty Shades of Grey – has charmlessly attacked the late David Foster Wallace. Writing on Twitter BEE says “Anyone who finds David Foster Wallace a literary genius has got to be included in the, Literary Doucebag-Fools Pantheon [sic]... David Foster Wallace carried around a literary pretentiousness that made me embarrassed to have any kind of ties to the publishing scene … I continue to find David Foster Wallace the most tedious, overrated, tortured, pretentious writer of my generation”. As D T Max’s fine biography shows, BEE was the very problem that DFW was trying to answer. No wonder he feels so piqued.

ONLINE OBFUSCATION

At least Ellis took the trouble to own his own ungracious opinions. Not so R J Ellory, the latest author revealed for his “sock-puppet” antics, posting favourable reviews of their own novels and frothy denunciations of their rivals on Amazon’s reader reviews. An open letter, signed by among others Ian Rankin and Val McDermind, opposes the practice, and Amazon is being encouraged to tighten their rules for reviewers. Among the options being urged on them is that reviewers have to prove they have bought the book. Which reminds me of Sydney Smith’s quip, that he never read a book before reviewing it as it prejudices one so.

LITERARY LIGHTNING ROD

Tickets are no doubt already sold out, but the news that J K Rowling is to appear at one of Scotland’s smallest festivals, Lennoxlove, has certainly put the festival on the map. That its publicity is run by the company which runs J K Rowling’s publicity is a conspicuous coincidence. Perhaps Ms Rowling, who will be promoting her adult (but not in the Fifty Shades sense) novel, The Casual Vacancy, might be drawn on what she makes of a title which arrived this week (before anyone except a handful of people has read her new opus) entitled The Vacant Casualty, written by one Patty O’Furniture. Evidently one doesn’t need to read the book to write the parody either.