Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish, has a link to a list of thirty slams of great authors by great authors. Here is Mark Twain on Jane Austen: “I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone."
Note that he says, "Every time I read Pride and Prejudice." There is enough complicated irony in that one phrase to keep a Jane Austen fan happy for a week.
I'm normally good at hunting these things down, but I couldn't find the link on Sullivan's blog. Professor Wolff (or somebody else, if anybody has it), would you mind posting it. I'd love to see the rest of the list.
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