Bathroom Yumor
Throneside browse-through reading: Poisoned Pens: Literary Invective from Amis to Zola,ed. Gary Dexter. Some good bile, wily trashings, and generally creative bitchiness dealt upon all and literary sundry by all and literary sundry.
The only two I've read quotes from so far who aren't imaginative and are mostly just petty snipers seem to be Kingsley & Martin Amis ... I mean honestly, Mark Twain picks on everyone (including a few I quite like) and I still love him. These two ... yuckobluckodoodooheads*.
Curmudgeonry is a careful art. The level of shallow schoolyard invective the Amises stoop to in the letters and columns and convos quoted makes me wonder if I should bother ever reading anything they've written. They've never made it high on my too-long to-read list, and if this is the best they can do (and what writer isn't at their best when spitting out contempt?) I don't know if they're worth it.
*Caveat: Martin's provocation of Salman Rushdie, via a cruel impression of Beckett's prose, into challenging him 'step outside', wasn't bad.
The only two I've read quotes from so far who aren't imaginative and are mostly just petty snipers seem to be Kingsley & Martin Amis ... I mean honestly, Mark Twain picks on everyone (including a few I quite like) and I still love him. These two ... yuckobluckodoodooheads*.
Curmudgeonry is a careful art. The level of shallow schoolyard invective the Amises stoop to in the letters and columns and convos quoted makes me wonder if I should bother ever reading anything they've written. They've never made it high on my too-long to-read list, and if this is the best they can do (and what writer isn't at their best when spitting out contempt?) I don't know if they're worth it.
*Caveat: Martin's provocation of Salman Rushdie, via a cruel impression of Beckett's prose, into challenging him 'step outside', wasn't bad.