Q. Is there a polite way of halting a wannabe novelist from reading his oeuvre aloud to an unwilling audience? A neighbour on the residents’ committee happened to be leaving as friends were arriving for drinks and I felt I should invite him to join us. It was all going swimmingly until he told someone he was writing a novel, and she made the mistake of pretending she would be interested in reading it. No one had reckoned on this (very insensitive) man having a copy of the wretched thing on his iPhone and he read aloud at length, pausing only to laugh at his own genius. It killed the atmosphere stone dead.
— S.R., London W2
A. As the host, it was your responsibility to come forward and remove the iPhone from the soliloquist’s hand, insisting, ‘A work of this quality needs a sober audience. I can’t allow you to waste this brilliant material on drunks.’
Q.
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