Only a few short years ago, the average stay-at-home mom spent her relaxation time reading Jackie Collins and staring at the pool boy. Now, half of them are outselling Jackie Collins writing porn about the...

Nature fits all her children with something to do, he who would write and can’t write, can surely review.

Authors, reviews are not for you. They are not for you. Authors, reviews are not for you.

But ‘I worked hard on this’ doesn’t exempt you from criticism. Those harsh reviews aren’t about anyone being out to get me. It’s not an Authors vs. Reviewers thing. It’s people taking the time to...

problem” is to vex, annoy, threaten or harrass them, you are almost certainly a bigger asshole.6. You may also be twelve.7. You are not responsible for anyone else’s actions or karma, but you are responsible...

Making judgments on films is in many ways so peculiarly vaporous an occupation that the only question is why, beyond the obvious opportunities for a few lectures fees and a little careerism at a dispiritingly...

[Blog post, March 10, 2014]

The American critic Dale Peck, author of Hatchet Jobs (2004), argues that reviewing finds its true character in critical GBH such as Fischer’s [review of Martin Amis’s Yellow Dog]. It represents a return to the...

As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a...

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

I’m not interested in the reviews by critics over the age of 15.

[O]ne can scarcely be frightened off writing what one wants to write for fear an obscure reviewer should patronise one on that account.

what do you want for nothing?” The buyer does not waive his right to express his opinion.”[Thick Skin and Bad Reviews, Blog post, June 26, 2013]

If the book’s bad enough, they’ll publish it, and if it’s bad bad enough, the daily reviewers will love it, and it’ll sell.