{"id":160,"date":"2005-06-07T18:07:00","date_gmt":"2005-06-07T18:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/wordpress\/?p=160"},"modified":"2010-01-10T16:01:07","modified_gmt":"2010-01-10T16:01:07","slug":"filler-by-proxy-xviii-if-you-cant-say-anything-nice-come-sit-with-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/2005\/06\/filler-by-proxy-xviii-if-you-cant-say-anything-nice-come-sit-with-me.html","title":{"rendered":"Filler by Proxy XVIII: If you can&#8217;t say anything nice, come sit with me"},"content":{"rendered":"<div align=\"justify\">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&#8217;t care to withdraw any time in the forseeable future?<\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\"><strong><em>You are not alone!<\/em><\/strong>  But wouldn&#8217;t you love to give them a piece of your mind, perhaps even &#8211; faint hope &#8211; 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 <em>to their faces?<\/em><\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\">One man has done this, not once, but <strong>twice<\/strong> in an afternoon.   You would think he had peaked when he asked <a href=\"http:\/\/books.guardian.co.uk\/authors\/author\/0,5917,-4,00.html\">Martin Amis<\/a> if it&#8217;s ever occurred to him that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hosted-forum.com\/index.php?boardid=amisweb&#038;showtopic=28\">he&#8217;s become the same dreary old fossil<\/a> his father turned into, but not long after he&#8217;s quizzing <a href=\"http:\/\/books.guardian.co.uk\/hay2005\/story\/0,15880,1495897,00.html\">Christopher Hitchens<\/a> about whether he can honestly compare himself to George Orwell while simultaneously <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hosted-forum.com\/index.php?boardid=amisweb&#038;showtopic=28\">currying favour from George Bush&#8217;s moneyed cronies<\/a>.  Modestly, he describes both encounters as &#8220;accidental&#8221;.<\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\">Hail <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hosted-forum.com\/index.php?boardid=amisweb&#038;showtopic=28\">PolishBobStupak<\/a>, making the literary world a better place, two writers at a time.<\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\"> <\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\"><em>Link found via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bookslut.com\/blog\/\">Bookslut<\/a>.<\/em><\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\"> <\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\"><strong>BONUS:<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/exile.ru\/167\/167101802.html\">Nastiest.  Review.  Ever.<\/a>  Forget who forwarded this to me; it was some time last year.  When someone begins &#8220;This is the worst thing I&#8217;ve ever read&#8221; and still has 1,339 words of elaboration left in him, you know you are in the presence of pure, burning hatred.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217;t care [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3598,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions\/3598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}