His review has got to be 'in' by mid-day tomorrow ...at about 9pm his mind will grow relatively clear, and until the small hours he will sit ...skipping expertly through one book after another and laying each one down with the comment, 'God, what tripe!' ...Then suddenly he will snap into it. All the stale old phrases - 'a book that no one should miss', 'something memorable on every page' - jump into their places like iron filings obeying the magnet. Thus did George Orwell, writing forty years ago in Confessions of a Book Reviewer, describe the labours of a typical literary hack. Precious little has changed over the intervening decades; the servility of the satirical magazine Private Eye. Lord Gnome's Literary Companion assembles, in thematic order, the best of these columns to present an astringent, rude and funny survey of publishers and the published.
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Editorial Reviews
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"The originality, imagination and hilarity of the best writing here makes Gnome's a far more heart-warming Companion than the mill-run of Christmas round-ups." - New Statesman and Society "This is the authentic voice of moral outrage, rarely heard in the literary world today. Long may His Lordship keep raising it." - Sunday Times
About the Author
Francis Wheen writes regularly for the Observer, Guardian, Private Eye and Literary Review. His previous books include Tom Driberg: His Life and Indiscretions.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sharp as a kitchen knife, clever as a cat,
By A Customer
This review is from: Lord Gnome's Literary Companion (Paperback)
This book is a witty, wide-screen picture of the back-scratching and log-rolling that infest the literary establishment. Since I edited it, and wrote quite a bit of it, I need hardly add that it's compulsive reading. -- Francis Wheen
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A sure cure for irony deficiency,
By
This review is from: Lord Gnome's Literary Companion (Paperback)
Exuberantly caustic. To wit, from a review of Michael Jackson's book of poetry (!): "Poetry is sissy stuff that rhymes. Usually, you can't give it away. But this little bundle of bosh is riding high in the bestseller charts, up there with _Diana_ and the Michelin Guide to stuffing your face . . . . 'Course, it's not so easy, as a visit to the book section of any Virgin record shop soon shows. There you see them, the young, in all their glory, patiently holding books up to their ears, or doggedly trying to insert them into the slots of their CD-players . . .". If you've been howling over Joe Queenan's recent bit of bile, you don't know what you've been missing. Check it out.
1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
All Whining, All the time -- we're British,
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This review is from: Lord Gnome's Literary Companion (Paperback)
"Lord Gnome's Literary Companion" is funny and terribly witty and maybe even serves a purpose though I'm not sure what. But after a few minutes of slogging through the huffy sarcasm and personal attacks against succesful authors, you do start to get the feeling that there's more going on here than the need to deflate egos. It's obvious that for the anonymous critics it's so much easier to be clever than to actually say something or even attempt to. In other words it's easier to write an anonymous personal attack, laid thick with cynicism, nihilism, jealousy, hostility and aggression than it is to attempt an actual meaningful work of art. So here the 'writers' of Lord Gnome's companion prove the point that it's not so easy this writing business, is it. If it was then that's what we'd be doing instead of slinging crud anonymously. Because you know what boys, a so-called critique is not really art.
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