SOMEONE doesn't like the renowned novelist and travel writer Paul Theroux.
In the latest issue of the monthly American publication, Boston Magazine, his novels are described as "beach reads, middle brow bricks just a step above a Judith Krantz or a Belva Plain". As for his travel books and essays: "With exaggerated vindictiveness, he has found half the world wanting in goodness and grace, brains and bravery, cleanliness and character."
That's not all. Personally, Theroux is "small and surly and spiteful ... He has bowel worries and eats prunes for breakfast and once made inquiries to me about platform shoes."
So who is this person who so dislikes everything about Paul Theroux? Why, none other than his brother Alexander, who writes with such venom that the sibling hostilities between Margaret Drabble and A.S Byatt seems positively affectionate in contrast.
Here's Alexander Paul's critical reputation: "He is ignored by the Academy and smiled down on by the literary establishment, for the most part. Nobody I know has written's many books (20 novels, 10 travel books) with so little serious critical recognition to show for it. None of his books are taught in colleges or have cult status or have generated, I believe, a single scholarly essay, and most of them are presently out of print." As you can see, so intent is the brother on telling it like it is that he gets his singulars and plurals all mixed up.
But it's not just Alexander who dislikes Paul. Unnamed third parties can't stand him, either: "Someone once said to me, uncharitably, Paul is about Paul, envious, short, womanising, cheap, opinionated and angry'."
Not that his close relatives see him in this way, of course: "We in the family don't mind his affected gentility, his smug and self important airs, his urgent starfucking, insistence that he's a friend of lords and ladies, and only laugh at the fame he courts."
Alexander doesn't choose to tell us why he regards his famous brother with such spleen. And Boston Magazine was obviously just very happy to print the outburst - so happy that the strapline to the piece gleefully reads: "Paul Theroux's new book is venal, vengeful, spiteful, cowardly, lying, pretentious, self promoting crap. Or so says his brother."
Over to you now, Paul.
SCORN isn't confined to the US, of course. In his native of Wales, the great poet R.S. Thomas has been pretty withering about Justin Wintle's biography of him, which is called Furious Interiors and which is published this week.
Wintle has spent the last three years trying to secure the cooperation of the poet, but to no avail. Thomas's attitude to his biographer hasn't been as extreme as that of I.D. Salinger to Ian Hamilton (Salinger went to court over Hamilton's attempt to write his life story), but nor has it been as passive as that of Samuel Beckett, who famously told Deirdre Bair that he would neither help nor hinder her in her enquiries.
Wintle finally got to meet the 83 year old Thomas in London this year, but the poet denies any recollection of the meeting. And though in a letter Thomas told Wintle that he had no objection to a critical study of his work being written by "a competent critic", last week Thomas roundly declared "This man is not a competent critic" - a puzzling remark, given that the poet denies reading the finished book when it was sent to him by HarperCollins.
Poor Wintle must be feeling a bit hard done by. Though Thomas writes in English, he's an ardent Welsh nationalist and he insisted that anyone who wished to write about his life would have to speak Welsh. So Wintle went to the trouble of learning the language for all the good it did him.
And for a biography, Furious Interiors misses out on an important fact. The poet's wife, Mildred, died some years ago, and after that Thomas became close to a Canadian woman of Irish extraction called Betty. Wintle couldn't find out much about this relationship and so only mentions it in roundabout fashion. In fact, unknown to Wintle, the couple married a short time ago.
I'd imagine the poet is chuckling at the omission.
THE Jervis Centre should look splendid when they actually get round to finishing it. Certainly the new Waterstone's, which is situated in the centre and which, a week after its planned opening, is now up and running, looks very impressive indeed.
Not on the ground floor, mind you, which is a bit pinched and which gives no indication that upstairs has acres of space and thousands of books in an atmosphere that's very congenial for browsing.
When I arrived, Patricia Scanlan had just finished performing the official opening and was chatting to fans, while champagne was being dispensed and Stockton's Wing were providing some music.
Ann Griffin is the manager of the store, and I'm assured she'll be more than willing to help you find the books you want.
PAUL DURCAN's new book, Christmas Day, contains two poems - the five page "A Goose in the Frost", dedicated to Seamus Heaney in Stockholm last December, and the 74 page" poem which gives the volume its title.
It's published by the Harvill Press in a handsome hardback edition at £9.99, and to celebrate the occasion the poet will be reading in Trinity College's Edmund Burke Theatre on Monday night at 8pm.
The evening is organised by Poetry Ireland in association with TCD's School of English, and, given Durcan's reputation as a dynamic reader of his work, I expect the Edmund Burke to be packed out.