http://threemonkeysonline.com/book_blog/2008/novels/giles-corens-winkler A book blog, for Three Monkeys Online Sun, 21 Mar 2010 07:46:29 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 hourly 1 http://threemonkeysonline.com/book_blog/2008/novels/giles-corens-winkler/comment-page-1#comment-3017 giles coren Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:33:55 +0000 http://threemonkeysonline.com/book_blog/?p=29#comment-3017 dear shane, mr barry, whichever, I came upon this review of yours by chance, shamelessly self-googling looking for an old article to rip-off. like most people with (laboriously) regular paid comment work, I have never really had time to get involved in the blogosphere - and for someone like me it's pretty unrewarding anyway, since, while there are probably no more than a few hundred thousand people around who think i'm a cunt, the net can make it seem like billions. (that said, i am sure there are also truly very few women who want to sleep with me because i am in the telly, but the net does the same job with them of illusorily inflating their numbers, and makes me feel grotesquely sexually embattled). i only really want to say that your review was quite a revelation to me in being both excruciatingly 'bad' (in the sense of your evident detestation of my book) and also entirely fair. i got a very mixed bag of reviews - from the preposterously enthusiastic to some not far off yours in tone - and i told people who asked that i really, really didn't mind what people wrote as long as they appeared to have read it more or less properly (hard when you hate a thing, i know, but important if you are going to comment publicly) and didn't have some massively obvious axe to grind. I got great reviews by authors i know personally and like, which made them, obviously, less valuable (utterly pointless in some ways, for me) and bad ones by old enemies (ditto), some of whom had not read the whole book (the give away was always failing to have got to the bit where wallenstein turns out to have been lying.) your review makes me feel entirely honest about having said that i don't mind a bad review if it's honest. Yours is, obviously, a proper stinker. but it left me with no sad feeling at all. no anger. because it's an honest and totally defensible position. you're basically entirely right about the book, throughout. it's just that i think it's better than that. that's all. and i sort of would, wouldn't i?or i wouldn't have pissed away two years of my life writing it. gah, and now i've wasted 400 words unpaid when i'm supposed to be sitting here writing a column by lunchtime. leading me to arrive at exaxtly the same conclusion about my self that you did. namely, that i'm a total cunt. all the best, giles dear shane, mr barry, whichever,
I came upon this review of yours by chance, shamelessly self-googling looking for an old article to rip-off. like most people with (laboriously) regular paid comment work, I have never really had time to get involved in the blogosphere - and for someone like me it’s pretty unrewarding anyway, since, while there are probably no more than a few hundred thousand people around who think i’m a cunt, the net can make it seem like billions. (that said, i am sure there are also truly very few women who want to sleep with me because i am in the telly, but the net does the same job with them of illusorily inflating their numbers, and makes me feel grotesquely sexually embattled).
i only really want to say that your review was quite a revelation to me in being both excruciatingly ‘bad’ (in the sense of your evident detestation of my book) and also entirely fair.
i got a very mixed bag of reviews - from the preposterously enthusiastic to some not far off yours in tone - and i told people who asked that i really, really didn’t mind what people wrote as long as they appeared to have read it more or less properly (hard when you hate a thing, i know, but important if you are going to comment publicly) and didn’t have some massively obvious axe to grind. I got great reviews by authors i know personally and like, which made them, obviously, less valuable (utterly pointless in some ways, for me) and bad ones by old enemies (ditto), some of whom had not read the whole book (the give away was always failing to have got to the bit where wallenstein turns out to have been lying.)
your review makes me feel entirely honest about having said that i don’t mind a bad review if it’s honest. Yours is, obviously, a proper stinker. but it left me with no sad feeling at all. no anger. because it’s an honest and totally defensible position. you’re basically entirely right about the book, throughout. it’s just that i think it’s better than that. that’s all. and i sort of would, wouldn’t i?or i wouldn’t have pissed away two years of my life writing it.
gah, and now i’ve wasted 400 words unpaid when i’m supposed to be sitting here writing a column by lunchtime. leading me to arrive at exaxtly the same conclusion about my self that you did. namely, that i’m a total cunt.
all the best,
giles

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