Literary mobocracy …

… Brought to Book: James Marriott | Alexander Larman | The Critic Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Few writers or editors, fearing similar treatment, were brave enough to defend Marriott publicly. The novelist Amanda Craig was a rare exception. She told me that ‘I thought it was a good, thoughtful piece, and made a perfectly valid point because at least one genuinely fine novel, James Scudamore’s English Monsters, is another one left off by Booker. I also think it disgraceful that a writer as good as Jude Cook has had to have Jacob’s Advice published by Unbound. It’s in nobody’s interest, least of all feminists like myself, if the literary novel becomes a female enclave, just as between 1980-2000 it was full of men preening. That’s not equality but a new inequality. I do worry that the new generation of men might be being punished for the egregious behaviour of those like Amis and Self by a critical climate that is so preoccupied by being woke that it may be oblivious to actual talent.’