Fiery Elephants

It seems this is authors making asses of themselves week (see here and here and follow the links) and here I am, re-reading Nick Hornby's The Complete Polysyllabic Spree (see an earlier post) and come across this gem, Hornby reviewing "Like a Fiery Elephant, Jonathan Coe's brilliant biography of B. S. Johnson," an obscure British experimental novelist, who complained quite a bit "to publishers, or agents, or even printers" (106-07):

'In reviewing my novel Albert Angelo, the Sunday Times described me as "one of the best writers we've got," and the Irish Times called the book "a masterpiece" and put me in the same class as Joyce and Beckett,' he wrote to Allen Lane, the founder of Penguin, demanding to know why he wasn't interested in paperback rights. 'The Sunday Times called me "one of the best writers we've got," and the Irish Times called the book a masterpiece and put me in the same class as James Joyce and Samuel Beckett,' he wrote to his foreign-rights agent, demanding to know why there had been no Italian publication of his first novel. 'You ignorant unliterary Americans make me puke,' he wrote to Thomas Wallace of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. after Wallace had turned him down. [...] 'For your information, Albert Angelo was reviewed by the Sunday Times as by "one of the best writers we've got" and the Irish Times called the book a masterpiece and put me in the same class as Joyce and Beckett.' And then, finally and gloriously:

. . . The Sunday Times called me 'one of the best writers we've got,' and the Irish Times called the book a masterpiece, and compared me with Joyce and Beckett.

However, it seems that I am to be denied the opportunity of a most profound and enormous experience: of being present with my wife Virginia when our first child is born at your hospial on or about July 24th . . .

This last letter was to the Chief Obstetrician of St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, after Johnson had discovered that it was not the hospital's policy to allow fathers to attend a birth. [...] In the end, it's just another variation on 'Don't you know who I am?' - which in Johnson's case was an even more unfortunate question than it normally is.

What a pity he lived before the time of e-mail. Otherwise he may have wanted to consider this lovely application.