Sour Grapes

[intertext]

I must confess to being rather tired of reading one famous author sounding off about how awful other famous authors are. I've mentioned before that I wish Philip Pullman would count his millions and SHUT UP about CS Lewis. Now we have VS Naipaul lambasting everyone from Jane Austen to Henry James, EM Forster, Hardy, Joyce, Dickens and Hemingway (well, I agree with him about Hemingway, but that's beside the point). All he really succeeds in doing is making himself look silly, I think. And whiny, because his books don't sell well in his own country. Well, he can't force people to buy or read his work. And he's certainly not going to win legions of fans by sounding off about how great he is in comparison to all these others... Harold Pinter can breathe a sigh of relief, though; apparently Naipaul approves of him.