Hitch, Mart and their “inexhaustible conversation about womanhood in all its forms”

Hitch, Mart and their “inexhaustible conversation about womanhood in all its forms”

A rare moment of prescience. In Friday’s Independent, I released a brief but heartfelt cry of anguish about the narcissistic doings of Martin Amis, Christopher Hitchens, Anna Ford, Clive James and any other ageing literati who belonged to an informal dining club  back in the 1970s. I mentioned at some point that the on-stage conversation… Continue reading Hitch, Mart and their “inexhaustible conversation about womanhood in all its forms”

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Do the British really loathe each other?

One of the easiest ways for a British writer to gain cheap credibility with readers is to sneer at his fellow-countrymen. Foreigners like these acts of literary self-abuse because they make them feel smug. The English love them even more for the humiliation, so appealing to our national taste for masochism, which they provide.  … Continue reading Do the British really loathe each other?

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Where writers go wild

Literary purists – JM Coetzee, Martin Amis, Zadie Smith, myself – like to argue that the writing of fiction is a solitary, often anguished, occupation. Increasingly, though, the idea is taking route that writing can be a social, even larky pursuit. The Quill and Quire blog has picked up a story suggesting that 18th century… Continue reading Where writers go wild

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