Vanity Fair profiles The eXile: "Gutsy...visceral...serious journalism...abusive, defamatory...poignant...paranoid...and right!"
www.exiledonline.com
Books

I’ve been tipped off recently that the hounds of Hell are after P.G. Wodehouse again. And we can’t have that sort of thing going on.

The occasion for fresh attacks on the great writer is the publication of P.G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters in the UK. (Not available in the US yet.) It gave an opportunity to UK journalist-creeps to write book reviews in which they dredged up the old scandal about Wodehouse, the only old scandal, involving the time he was interned by the Nazis and wound up giving some cluelessly chipper radio broadcasts which got him condemned as a collaborator.

This encourages a bunch of review-reading morons to blather online about refusing to read Wodehouse anymore—that’ll teach him not to collaborate with Nazis in the afterlife! Or else they forgive Wodehouse his moral lapse, and will condescend to re-read Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit and Young Men in Spats and Mulliner Nights and all his other great novels and short stories.

Fuck all y’all! You aren’t good enough for Wodehouse! Go suck on some T.S. Eliot, that’s all you deserve!

(more…)

Posted on: November 12th, 2011 | Comments (27)

Woe Is Wodehouse And His Biography

This article was first published in The eXile on October 4, 2007 Robert McCrum’s biography of P.G. Wodehouse was published in 2004. At the time, I ignored it. I know the formula for these bios. You won’t catch me sanctioning…

Posted on: November 12th, 2011 | Comments (6)

Conscience of a Radical: Corey Robin’s “The Reactionary Mind”

The first rule of debate: Never accept your opponent’s characterization of his own position. But for decades, liberals–in their perpetual Nerf-war against conservatives–have done just the opposite. While conservatives bloviate about traditionalism (Buckley), skepticism (Burke), sobriety (Taft), and order (Mill),…

Posted on: November 1st, 2011 | Comments (88)

Rin Tin Tin’s Rich Bitch Biographer

There’s a book out about Rin Tin Tin, the old dog-star of Hollywood, by that stuck-up New Yorker hack Susan Orlean. She’s best-known for writing the bestseller The Orchid Thief, which got adapted by lofty screenwriter Charlie Kaufman into a…

Posted on: October 28th, 2011 | Comments (53)

Black Metal Nation: How Norway Spawned The World’s Most Violent Rightwing Metalheads

My idea of a Norwegian was always some cheerless Social Democrat in a knit sweater whose greatest joy in life was comparing the price of beer in Prague (cheap) to the price of beer in Krakow (even cheaper). Then I…

Posted on: July 23rd, 2011 | Comments (75)

Why The American Right Never Liked V.S. Naipaul

I’ve often wondered why the American Right has been so quiet about V.S. Naipaul. He’s easily the most talented reactionary writer in the English language–maybe the only living talent left in the right-wing zombiesphere. The American Right devotes an insane…

Posted on: July 1st, 2011 | Comments (90)

Pretentious Junkies Down Under: An Introduction to Contemporary Australian Drug Lit

I’ve decided to write a sequel to my piece about DFW and American drug lit, and talk about how five Aussie writers have handled the same topic. But don’t worry, most of these people have been published in the US…

Posted on: June 8th, 2011 | Comments (28)

“Inside WikiLeaks”: Revenge Of The Second Banana

From The eXiled’s Special Australasia Correspondent PERTH, AUSTRALIA–First, the Right accused WikiLeaks of endangering US soldiers and Afghan informers. Then after “Cablegate” the neocons conceded to the lack of evidence and switched to the opposite tactic: insisting there was nothing…

Posted on: March 2nd, 2011 | Comments (68)

Enough Appeasement: Why We Need Media Criticism Delivered In A Cruise Missile

This article was first published in the New York Press on February 8, 2005. Thank God for the Iraqi insurgency. If it weren’t for the resistance tying us down, we would have already moved against far more serious foes like…

Posted on: December 14th, 2010 | Comments (23)

Blood-Sucking Death Porn Dykes Do Western Australia: A Survey Of True Crime From Down Under

PERTH — Western Australia is one of Oceania’s best sources of grotesquerie. In the same way the Southern States serve America, Western Australia provides an endless supply of serial killing tales, small-town hatred and supernatural horror. Melbourne might be the…

Posted on: October 7th, 2010 | Comments (28)

eXiled eXclusive! Advance Copy Of Martin Amis Eulogy For (The Nearly-Departed) Christopher Hitchens

If you’re like us, you’re sick and tired of having to wait around for some loathsome celebrity to die just to read their obituary. Who says we can’t read the obituary before they die, on our own time? This is…

Posted on: September 17th, 2010 | Comments (41)

Christopher Hitchens Update: A Life Spent Blowing Smoke, A Death By Poetic Justice

“C’mon cancer, I dare you to knock this sneer off my face.” Since writing my last piece on Hitchens (“How Christopher Hitchens Robbed Hunter S. Thompson’s Grave”), I’ve finally found a widow smart enough to give Blitcons a massive up-yours….

Posted on: September 16th, 2010 | Comments (32)

How Christopher Hitchens Robbed Hunter S. Thompson’s Grave

Ancient Gonzo Wisdom should be a perfect book: a collection of all the interviews Hunter S. Thompson ever gave. It begins with a talk Thompson gave on ABC News in 1967, shortly after Hell’s Angels was released. It ends with…

Posted on: September 11th, 2010 | Comments (79)

UFOs Made Boring

There’s this woman making the rounds of the talk shows with her new book, UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record. She’s an earnest, homely progressive named Leslie Kean with a tan semi-afro, wire-rimmed glasses, and the…

Posted on: September 7th, 2010 | Comments (21)

Hell Is Other People On Amazon.Com

When Amazon started printing readers’ book reviews on the net, a window opened briefly on the mental worlds of ordinary people — or, as Harry Dean Stanton so memorably called them, “ordinary fuckin’ people.” Everyone should have a look at…

Posted on: September 6th, 2010 | Comments (32)

Jonathan Franzen: “Will Rim Bobos For Book-Of-The-Month Fame”

This review was first published in The eXile on March 21, 2002. Jonathan Franzen’s novel The Corrections, billed as a masterpiece, is a worthless fraud, a hopelessly trite story gaudied up with tedious overwriting. The overwriting is meant to conceal…

Posted on: August 27th, 2010 | Comments (37)

Mark Twain’s Autobiography: A Pre-approval

You might have heard that Mark Twain’s autobiography is going to be published this fall—the real one, not the abridged, expurgated, censored, compromised, cleaned-up, Sunday school superintendent version that’s circulated over the years. 5,000 pages of sheer bile, cussedness, and…

Posted on: June 17th, 2010 | Comments (54)

The Crying Conservative: How Glenn Beck Taught His Feminine Side To Turn Tricks

The following is an adapted excerpt from Alexander Zaitchik’s book, Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance, just released by Wiley & Sons. Every July 4, Glenn Beck emcees the Stadium of Fire celebration in Provo, Utah. The…

Posted on: May 14th, 2010 | Comments (36)

A Brief History Of Media Cover-Ups & Self-Censorship: Who’s Afraid of Russ Baker’s “Family Of Secrets”

On February 17, 1967, the newspapers ran stories about a sensational new investigation into JFK’s assassination, headed by a New Orleans DA named Jim Garrison, who called into question the “lone gunman” theory laying all the blame on Lee Harvey…

Posted on: April 11th, 2010 | Comments (49)

New Shit Has Come to Light on The Big Lebowski

Lotta books on The Big Lebowski have come out recently, and I’ve slogged through them so you don’t have to: I’m a Lebowski, You’re a Lebowski by Bill Green, Ben Peskoe, Will Russell, and Scott Shuffitt The Dude Abides: The…

Posted on: March 27th, 2010 | Comments (61)

1