One of the funniest scenes in Jonathan Coe’s The Closed Circle comes when Doug, the hitherto high-flying political journalist, learns of his latest professional appointment. Is he to be the paper’s political editor? Deputy editor, even? Alas, the news is too irksome to be borne. ‘LITERARY EDITOR’ he informs an audience of concerned friends. ‘Do you hear me? LITERARY – FUCKING – EDITOR. They want me to commission book reviews. They want me to spend every day putting novels into fucking jiffy bags and sending them out to… to… The cunts. The fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking CUNTS.’

Literary Review

May 2007

Categories

D J Taylor

Biographer’s Luck

Something to Read in the Evenings

Dusting off the Crystal Ball

Piano Man

Whatever Happened to the Establishment?

Author of Himself

Old Stench of Death

Told by a Dog

The History of Mart

They Finished Their Drinks and Left

Nero to Zero

Porn Again

It is Good She Has Gone to America

‘He Wrote This Specially For Me’

Sorrowing in Sunlight

A Life Less Extraordinary

Passage to Hampstead

Naked in Nottingham

In Defence of the Hack

East Coast Escapades

Mart – The Return

The American Delusion

The Solace of Solitude

Hour of the Egoist

Where Mischief Starts