Ready steady thump!
Cioran on Beckett: "he disparages no one, unaware of the hygenienic function of malevolence, its salutary virtues, its executory quality. I have never heard him speak ill of friends or enemies, a form of superiority for which I pity him and from which, unconsciously, he must suffer. If denigration were denied me, what difficulties and discomforts, what complicatioans would result!"
I too prefer not to suffer, and I took great pleasure in Mark at RSB delivering a blow to "Daren King's absolutely rubbish Jim Giraffe. [..] The experience of reading it is burned into my mind as the worst few hours I've spent all year (note, not the worst few hours reading, but the worst few hours full stop)." What joy!
I remember Natasha Walter's praise for King's first novel Boxy an Star. The review Mark links to confirms the suspicion that the fuss was probably due to the Nathan Barley tendency in London's literary set.
