Dale Peck, an American in his thirties with tufty hair, has so far written three novels which have been well received but not widely read. Now he is a big name in America, not as a novelist but a vitriolic critic. From his pulpit in New Republic Peck squirts acidic invective at all the biggest names on the literary scene. Julian Barnes and Philip Roth are rubbished, Nabokov is described as ‘sterile’, Joyce ‘diarrhoeic’, Faulkner ‘an incomprehensible rambler’, Rick Moody ‘the worst writer of his generation’ and Charles Dickens ‘the worst writer to plague the English language’. Naturally Peck is unwilling to splash himself with the same juice. ‘The books I’ve published are among the best books published in the last ten years,’ he told a journalist from the New York Times; and as for this latest effort — ‘It’s impossible to review it badly.’ Now there’s a challenge.

Blackwell Bookshop

Purchase your copy here, 10% off RRP