Shoot The Archer

Strange all this… I suppose most liberal-minded people’s view of ex-cons - let’s say John McVicar, for instance - is that they’ve done their time, they’ve paid their dues and if they better themselves or achieve something after that, good on them. Weirdly with Archer, who, let’s face it seems to write books that people shell out money for (No. 2 in the Fiction list this past Sunday, behind Stephen King), apparently his crime was so venal that we have to keep kicking at him, make him really suffer because he’s just, well, beyond the pale. John McVicar was in for GBH. Archer was in for perjury… hmmm.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of John McVicar and I applaud his work and his life. I’m not a fan of Archer’s fiction myself. I’m particularly not a fan of the man or his politics. He did something incredibly stupid and paid the price that society demanded.

Why review him in the Observer’s ‘literary’ pages. Did they really think they might possibly like his new book? Have the Observer’s ‘literary’ pages ever liked a Jeffrey Archer book? Of course not. It smacks of self-regarding, inverted snobbery. Archer’s books sell in the thousands, even millions. He is one of the bestselling authors of the last generation. Presumably that suggests that he knows what he knows. Let him get on with it. Meanwhile the Observer can continue to review wonderful, worthy books that sell a few hundred copies and demonstrably move our culture forward each Sunday to the day when people will decide that they really want to buy the latest book by that obscure Albanian essayist from the 1920s.

Sadly the tone at the beginning of this pathetic string smacks of the same rather nasty, self-congratulatory viciousness.

I doubt Archer gives a fuck what journalists say about him. But it’s just as wanky being incoherently inconsistent as it is writing crap novels… but at least he seems to be entertaining loads of people. And he makes a fortune doing it.

Yes Steve but Archer makes a fortune. Therefore, like anyone who dares criticise Dan Brown, Jack Vetriano, Jim Davidson, Dido, the Cheeky Girls, Celine Dion and child pornography you’re being a snob.

I do however think its very unfair to accuse me of being incoherently inconsistent.

I dislike ALL failed-athlete perjuring prostitute-using adulterous shop-lifting pathologically lying fantasist anti-Semitic Tory con-men who’ve swindled millions out of Kurdish charities to fuel their Krug-based social-climbing parties. And who write intensely shit books.

I’m frankly hurt that you could suggest otherwise.

Anonymous, repeating herd platitudes is not presenting, let alone resting a case.

The main reason why Archer sells so many copies is because of his fame/notoriety. Sales snowball as he’s discussed and people want to join in; “see what it’s all about. It’s a cultural phenomenon, not a literary one. His books are probably as little read as Stephen Hawking’s or Lynne Truss’.

BTW, I think his prison sentence was both wrong and too long!