I know I’m bordering on the obsessive now, but I… I can’t help myself… I found out about Horsley’s latest bit of expert myth-making in the comments here and here, which have been attracting some search traffic over the past few days.
In a nutshell, Horsley has been turned back from the US border for being a fuckwit, and his PR machine has flown into rather flamboyant meltdown. Last night at the book’s launch party, Horsley’s publisher Carrie Kania wound up her speech by saying:
‘Tropic of Cancer, Lolita, Catcher in the Rye, American Psycho: all of these books have been deemed dangerous by the authorities and unfit for the general public to read. The Sex Pistols, banned in 1978. Sebastian banned, 30 years later.’
What gall. What audacity. What offensive codswallop. Comparing Horsley to Miller, Nabokov and Salinger reminds me of Richard Littlejohn declaring that he was more complex than Tolstoy.There is no denying however, that Horsley and his people are very good indeed at PR, and sly Horsley himself is just offensive enough to get himself turned away and talked about, but not offensive enough to get himself holed up in Guantanamo Bay with a matching fatwa.
Funny that.
Now let us never speak of him again.
