Boring, and skewering

For some reason Browser can’t get enough of these withering remarks made by one author about another: Gore Vidal on John Updike: “Just another boring little middle-class boy hustling his way to the top if he can do it.”

D. H. Lawrence on Herman Melville: “Nobody can be more clownish, more clumsy and sententiously in bad taste.” James Dickey on Robert Frost: “A sententious, holding-forth old bore.” Henry James on Edgar Allan Poe: “An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.”

Martin Amis on Cervantes: “an indefinite visit from your most impossible senior relative.” Anatole France on Emile Zola: “One of those unhappy beings of whom one can say that it would be better had he never been born.”

If you can’t get enough either, here’s 25 good ones and then 25 more good ones.