The London Times talks to writers about their most vicious reviews, written or received. John Banville recounts being reviewed by a critic who “would review books on the basis of the author’s photograph on the back cover”; Ben MacIntyre, the victim of a cruel review by John Carey, remembers “plotting complicated ways of murdering [the] Professor”; and A.N. Wilson recalls meeting a writer he reviewed who could quote the entire nasty thing by heart.
The real fun, though, comes at the article’s end, where Michiko Kakutani votes writers off the island:
WHAT KAKUTANI SAID ABOUT…
The Spooky Art
by Norman MailerThe effect of reading the book straight through is like going on a very long bus ride over a bumpy road, sitting next to a garrulous raconteur who never takes a nap and never pauses for breath and who seems to have no internal editor or censor in his head.
Magic Seeds
by V. S. NaipaulMr Naipaul’s contempt for all the people he has created in this novel makes for a mean, stingy book — a book full of judgmental pronouncements and free-floating rage, and sadly bereft of insight, compassion or wisdom.
Now Is The Time To Open Your Heart
by Alice WalkerIf this novel did not boast the name of Alice Walker, who won acclaim some two decades ago with The Color Purple, it’s hard to imagine how it could have been published. It is a remarkably awful compendium of inanities.