Fyodor v Jeffrey

I am grateful for Theodore Dalrymple's observations on Jeffrey Archer's prison diaries:

A great author was once unjustly condemned to four years' imprisonment. Describing its profound effect upon him, he wrote: ‘In my spiritual solitude I reviewed all my past life, went over it all in the smallest detail, brooded over my past, judged myself sternly and relentlessly, and even sometimes blessed fate for sending me this solitude, without which I could not have judged myself. [ . . .] I believed, I resolved, I swore to myself that in my future life there should be none of the mistakes and lapses there had been in the past.’
The great imprisoned author was Fyodor Dostoevsky, not Jeffrey Archer, extracts of whose Belmarsh prison diaries were published last week. Completely worthless from the literary point of view, and relentlessly banal in thought, observation and analysis, they are nonetheless revealing: of Lord Archer's mind and personality rather than of the prison system. And to be privy to Archer's mind in full cry is a depressing experience indeed.

Sticks and stones ...

Professor Orlando Figes, sitting down to read his copy of the Times Literary Supplement, was scarcely able to believe his ill-luck. If there are two little words that strike fear into the hearts of most recently published writers, it must be these: bad review. And never forget Somerset Maugham's advice to bruised authors: 'Don't read your reviews, dear boy.
Measure them.'

Sticks and stones, anti-bullshit, Evolution and Literary Criticism.