In Competition No. 2481 you were invited to supply a poem or a piece of prose ending with Gore Vidal’s nasty gnome, ‘It’s not enough to succeed. Others must fail.’ I’m not an especially nice person, but I’ve never experienced the pleasant frisson of schadenfreude; in fact, Rochefoucauld’s remark to the effect that there is something not unpleasing in the misfortunes of our friends strikes me as a bum maxim.
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