Lord Gnome's Literary Companion by Francis Wheen
His review has got to be 'in' by mid-day tomorrow ... at about 9 pm 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. Editorial Reviews Review 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 is an award-winning columnist for The Guardian in London, and the deputy editor of Private Eye.
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Binding: Hardcover
Published by: Verso: , 1995
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ISBN: 9781859849453 | 1859849458
362 pages.
Book Condition: Very Good
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