The Grand Inquisitor - am I a harsh critic?
In conversation with my father a few months ago - a man helplessly uglier and more gingered than myself - we got into a kerfuffle about the contested harshness of my book reviews. Ever since the brontosaurus Bostonian Steve Donoghue was kind enough to offer carte blanche for the books I procure from publishers and the tones I adopt to characterise them, I’ve received varied responses to my output. Admittedly, there is a readiness on my part to ridicule, upbraid and even desalinate a book, should these remedial steps be necessary. Might I be joining Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer and - bless his lepidoptering socks - Vladimir Nabokov as the critics least ready to crow and most ready to gratuitously excoriate? Am I the newest patrician intellectual to grab a feathering debutant by the goitre? Is mine to be the most intimidating office, with lines of dry-mouthed teens looking ashen before our meeting? I happen to think I’m proportionately, and sometimes guardedly, censorious when bored by bad books, and just as flamboyant and insistent in my congratulations of good books. I’m no Grand Inquisitor. I’m just testing the 21st century with a gleaming poker.
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