Sunday Times critic honoured for 'expert caning' of rock star's autobiography"A cacophony of jangling, misheard and misused words … a sea of Stygian self-justification and stilted self-conscious prose … " AA Gill's caustic review of Morrissey's Autobiography has been named the Hatchet Job of the Year.Gill was revealed as winner of the prize, set up by The Omnivore website and going to the writer "of the angriest, funniest, most trenchant book review" of the past year, on Tuesday evening. The Sunday Times journalist was up against biting write-ups from the likes of David Sexton, Rachel Cooke and Peter Kemp, but was found to be easily the most scathing of reviewers by judges Rosie Boycott, Brian Sewell and John Sutherland."The 30 reviewers on the long list were easily reduced to eight, and then, as we knocked them off the list from bottom to the top, the winner emerged without argument. It was exactly like awarding the head boy a gold cup for expert caning," said Sewell.Morrissey's Autobiography was published by Penguin, under its Classics imprint – a decision with which Gill takes great issue in his review, calling it the singer's "most Pooterishly embarrassing piece of intellectual social climbing". Gill concludes that putting the book, "a potential firelighter of vanity, self-pity and logorrhoeic dullness", in Penguin Classics "doesn't diminish Aristotle or Homer or Tolstoy; it just roundly mocks Morrissey, and this is a humiliation constructed by the self-regard of its... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2014-02-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
Bethanne Patrick's November highlights include new fiction from Michael Cunningham, a wild alt-history from Ed Park and nonfiction on COVID, mental illness and AI. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2023-10-31 13:00:40 UTC ]
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Man Booker Prize winner Richard Flanagan and distinguished novelists Haruki Murakami and Michael Cunningham are among the authors whose books are in contention for the 22nd Bad Sex in Fiction Award. The prize awards the “most egregious passage of sexual description in a work of fiction”, and... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2014-11-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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This week, new Michael Cunningham, a big Michael Jordan biography, and an evil place called the Thickety. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-05-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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