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wrinkled weasel

I cannot comment on the book but on a comment about the book by Max Dunbar:

"The impression you get from Nick Cohen’s powerful new book is that censorship is random."

The explanation for this is simple. Nobody knows what is right and wrong anymore. See the police tying themselves up in knots trying to keep the Muslims an Gays happy.

Political correctness will eat itself.

Because the internet has made it impossible to hide secrets, we had best accept it and learn to that living in a glass house renders stone-throwing impractical from within and without.

Erica Blair

'Mancunian novelist Max Dunbar' - so where's his novel?

This should read, 'Mancunian fantasist Max Dunbar'

Also, isn't it time warmonger Nick Cohen stopped banging on about being censored - has he no sense of irony?

David Lindsay

Erica Blair, Cohen spent years screaming down all criticism of the Iraq War as anti-Semitic (his mates at Harry's Place were still doing that several times per week until quite recently, when they got sick of my pointing it out elsewhere), yet who insists that he is not Jewish even though all criticism of his work is, again, motivated by anti-Semitism. Isn't it?

Matthew Blott

@ Erica Blair and David Lindsay

Whenever I read the comments section for Cohen's latest piece in the Observer you barely get past half a dozen comments without someone mentioning Iraq - even when he's writing about tax dodging by the rich, the unfairness of the coalition's deficit reduction strategy on the poor or other things leftwingers would normally be in agreement with. For the record I think the Iraq War was a mistake but I do not see the need to keep mentioning it over every Nick Cohen article, can we please move on from this as, apart from anything, it's just plain boring.

Frothy

Can you provide one piece of evidence that Nick Cohen shouted down all criticism of the Iraq war as anti- Semitic? Go one: one reference, one tiny quote, anything.

Richard of Moscow

Ed West, that genius who calls Greece a Catholic country (and no, he didn't mean Greek Catholic, or Orthodox) says it's a good book.
'nuff said.

steve williams

The Max dunbar 'critical essay' is more like a love letter. And a lot of it is based in a very different reality from the one everyone else inhabits. I mean, he claims near the end that Cohen is 'A lover of contemporary fiction' - I don't think anything Cohen has written in the last few years, where he dismisses all novels written in the last few years with the exception of those written by the past-it McEwan and Amis.

And Nick's scoffs at the FT review look pretty silly given his reference to 'a bad review from Eagleton being a good thing' - compare that with praise from Julie Burchill...

Incidentally, Eagleton is spot on about de Botton, no matter what Eagleton's background.

Erica Blair

Bott writes, 'For the record I think the Iraq War was a mistake but I do not see the need to keep mentioning it over every Nick Cohen article, can we please move on from this as, apart from anything, it's just plain boring.'

You must have missed Cohen cheerleading the disastrous intervention in Libya and demanding more of the same in Syria.

ps Do read Eagleton's demolition of the preposterous pseud de Botton in the guardian - it's a real treat. A real smack on de botton!

steve williams

Just to add on that:

"Given the professor’s ability to combine support for religious reaction with the support for the worst elements of the authoritarian Marxist tradition, a bad notice from that quarter is not an unmitigated disaster." But the fact that Eagleton is totally RIGHT about AdB IS a disaster for AdB. And testament to that is the fact that his media work just after the book was released focuses on... er... the bad reviews he's got.