Yesterday, I told you about WaPo book critic Michael Dirda‘s mighty disdain for bloggers, including his swipe at “a website written by someone who uses the moniker NovelGobbler or Biografiend,” neither of which actually seemed to exist. Well, the bastards finally did it, damn you: Somebody went and created The Novel Gobbler on Blogspot this morningand whoever it is indirectly blames me, because I’m the one who pointed out the Dirda passage to him.
“In keeping with the name that has been bestowed to us, we may show a preference for novels meant to be gobbled—those with thick, rich, delectable plots,” promises the newly pseudonymous blogger. But don’t expect the site to enter into a pissing match with Dirda and Richard Ford any time soon; the Gobbler finds the contretemps “boring, premised on an irrational, needless exercise in pitting two worthy outlets for literary discussion in opposition to each other, largely via gross generalizations, and pleasing to no one except, perhaps, the participants in the debate who like to hear themselves talk.” There’s already a review of Sharp Objects, a suspense novel by Gillian Flynn, on the site; let’s see where it goes from here…