A potential firelighter of vanity, self-pity and logorrhoeic dullness

From The Week:

Sunday Times columnist AA Gill has won the Hatchet Job of the Year award, presented by The Omnivore website for his scathing review of Morrissey's autobiography.

“It is a heavy tome, utterly devoid of insight, warmth, wisdom or likeability,” Gill wrote in his 1,200 word demolition of Morrissey's work, published in October last year. “It is a potential firelighter of vanity, self-pity and logorrhoeic dullness.”

Gill was also scathing about Morrissey's insistence that the book be released as a Penguin Classic. “Putting it in Penguin Classics doesn't diminish Aristotle or Homer or Tolstoy; it just roundly mocks Morrissey, and this is a humiliation constructed by the self-regard of its victim.”

The review was hailed as an “expert caning” by a panel of judges including Rosie Boycott, Brian Sewell and John Sutherland.

“The 30 reviewers on the long list were easily reduced to eight, and then, as we knocked them off the list from bottom to the top, the winner emerged without argument,” said Sewell.

More here.