Boring Like A Drill.

Book lovers: have some of the authors you have admired for so many years started to show unmistakeable signs that their heads have adjoured to a warm, sunny place up their own arses; have you heard muffled, lazily-constructed sentences from these exalted recesses to the effect that they like what they see and don’t care to withdraw any time in the forseeable future?

You are not alone! But wouldn’t you love to give them a piece of your mind, perhaps even – faint hope – penetrate the thick layer of self-regard that has fattened their heads, and just maybe shake them a little from their slough of complacency? Not from the comfortable redoubt of a book review or (god forbid) the sinecure of a literary column, but to their faces?

One man has done this, not once, but twice in an afternoon. You would think he had peaked when he asked Martin Amis if it’s ever occurred to him that he’s become the same dreary old fossil his father turned into, but not long after he’s quizzing Christopher Hitchens about whether he can honestly compare himself to George Orwell while simultaneously currying favour from George Bush’s moneyed cronies. Modestly, he describes both encounters as “accidental”.

Hail PolishBobStupak, making the literary world a better place, two writers at a time.

BONUS: Nastiest. Review. Ever. Forget who forwarded this to me; it was some time last year. When someone begins “This is the worst thing I’ve ever read” and still has 1,339 words of elaboration left in him, you know you are in the presence of pure, burning hatred.