After Slavic born Warhol, you could pass off anything as art, from hardcore porn to gangsta rap to the most vapid of sitcoms, secure in the knowledge that you’d be lauded as a subversive innovator by trend-snuffling critics and philistine academics secretly relieved not to have to grapple with the subtleties of the real right thing...

Writing & Reviewing from the margins
V.S. Naipaul is not an easy man to please. Over the course of a long and brilliant career, the Trinidadian author has displayed a tendency toward excoriating. His judgments, especially of human character, can be pitiless. He maintains that the world is populated by countless mimic men, individuals who muddle through their days in darkness, their thoughts and actions little more than degraded mimicry.
Half a writer's work is the discovery of his subject. The discovery of every tale, Naipaul writes, paraphrasing Joseph Conrad, is a moral one.
· Literary Occasions [nationalpost]
· Dimitrov's odd habit: keeping a diary [nationalpost]
· Why Would Anyone Review Books? [Poets & Writers 09/03]