Lyrical Critic Mugs

"I'm composing a song for the new administration. It's entitled, 'Hell to the chief'."

"That's the guy I hired to read Proust for me."

Bob encounters one of the bugs in the Jean Paul Sartre fan website.

Ed Flanders, Deconstruction Worker

'I hate to be so skeptical, but I still think the seance business is a hoax!'

First Novels.

Thomas Mann.

Reading my Critics

"Now I really hate poetry."

Jean-Paul Sartre

Blue Stockings

Why we need poetry. . .

No Elgar!

German Expressionist Breakfast

"And on the eighth day, God sat back with a scotch and soda and waited for the critical reviews."

It's Dostoevsky. It's Melville. It's Flaubert. But it doesn't dance.

Shakespeare was bisexual

"Your usually vicious sarcasm is weak. Go pump some irony."

"It turns out everyone here is self-published."

"Oh, this old thing?"

The Proust of Twitter

The Forbidden Joyce Kilmer

George Orwell

Emily Dickinson: Mime - "I think she's saying something about death."

"I did the math. If we want to read all of Proust in this lifetime, we have to start tomorrow morning."

"Never mind, Harry. Just remember, the 'Saturday Review' loved it."

Beckett for Beginners: "Waiting for Thumbkin"

The World's Biggest Book Club

'It's cutting edge theatre.'

"Heads up! It's another tidal wave of overwrought critical hyperbole!"

Günter Grass

"Mom, please! I'm a married woman whose friends have been reviewed favourably by the New York Times."

"Maybe I don't like stunning debuts."

"It's felt to be his most thought provoking work."

"The moral of the story, honey, is that being a celebrity does not make you a credible children’s book author."