I suppose it’s only a matter of time before the times catch up with George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman books. One can imagine the scene: an earnest young editor picks up a copy of the books, drawn to them by the …
Publishing will never be fair
When I worked in publishing in the early Noughties, “nobody is going to buy a book with a black girl on the cover” was a thing that people still said, out loud, in professional settings. The received wisdom was that …
Lancet, COVID-19, and the modeling of fallacy
by Dr David Bell
The Lancet was once a medical journalThere is supposed to be a clear line between medical publishing and propaganda. No less so than in the pages of the Lancet, previously been considered a relative bastion …
How sensitivity readers corrupt literature
What did the sensitivity readers say? And did I care? Of all the aspects of the recent attempt to cancel my work, the one that seems to fascinate most people is the moment when my publishers sent my Orwell Prize-winning …
Has Fuccboi killed literature?
By the drowsy standards of the undead American literary world, criticism of Fuccboi, the debut novel of 30-year-old Sean Thor Conroe, has been strangely polarised. The Washington Post hailed it as “its generation’s coming-of-age novel”; Gawker’s review, “More Like Suckboi,” …
Has Fuccboi killed literature?
By the drowsy standards of the undead American literary world, criticism of Fuccboi, the debut novel of 30-year-old Sean Thor Conroe, has been strangely polarised. The Washington Post hailed it as “its generation’s coming-of-age novel”; Gawker’s review, “More Like Suckboi,” …
The rise of the literary noble savage
According to elite cultural consensus, the great villain in America is the white male, so it’s only logical that publishing would run the toxic literary bad boys off. But this hatred is only levelled at the American man. Other talents …
