Eye was disappointed, but not really surprised, to encounter the ruthless mindset of local newspaper colleagues when it comes to literary criticism. If readers think national media critics are unkind, just look through your local papers!
We are referring to a critique of Ben Pink Dandelion's The Quakers: A Very Short Introduction, which appeared in the Islington Tribune. The critic, John Horder, has a wicked sense of humour and we are hoping that Ben is a humorist at heart or at least can take a good ribbing.
The critic has told his sister Caroline - 'who does good works while I do none' - that he wants a Quaker funeral when he dies with lots of delicious silence and no curates doing Alan Bennett-type imitations. He knows little about Quakers, 'apart from their enjoying silence at their meetings when one of them isn't speaking the inspired word of God'. It gets worse. Silence, says John, is impossible to write about, and he couldn’t think why Ben (or Pink as he calls him) hadn't mentioned Meher Baba, who was speechless for forty-four years. Also, he said our man hadn’t managed to dig up a single interesting fact about George Fox. Ben does mention Nixon, and our caustic critic wants to know whether ‘his trickster habit patterns had been actively encouraged by his Quakerism'. Hold on John!
The sharpest barb for Eye comes in the comment - 'there is too much gratuitous theorising, and very little, if any, hard-won experience'.