Craig Brown vs Distant Intimacy by Frederic Raphael
If you liked Public Enemies, the collected correspondence of Michel Houellebecq and Bernard Henry-Levy, then you will love Distant Intimacy, a book of emails between Frederic ‘Glittering Prizes’ Raphael and Joseph Epstein, aka ‘the American Frederic Raphael.’ Here’s what Craig Brown had to say about it, in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday:
“The first thing to be said about their exchanges is how extraordinarily unpleasant they are, almost as though they were trying to make it into the Guinness Book Of Records under a section called Authors, Most Bilious. It is all a bit like watching a tennis match, but instead of the competitors bashing balls to and fro, they prefer to bash authors and artists more successful than themselves.”
