Chump's Game

M. LeClerc: "Criticism, no matter how worthless, always appears superior to its object." Or almost always. The shooting-from-the-hip attacks on successful literary figures by the subunderground writer are not launched out of malice, but rather from a sometimes desperate will to survive that is

Image courtesy Fogg Museum.

nourished, sustained, by ridicule and mockery, no matter how petty and unjustified. Established writers who are assaulted understand this, most of them, and out of noblesse oblige let it pass.