Dale Peck is a human hatchet disguised as a literary critic. He’s unequivocal: “Novels and memoirs are on a wrong course. They are either inward-gazing, solipsistic and impotent or unconscious and rarefied, written by recidivist realists who pretend the twentieth century didn’t happen.” And America’s other book critics? “They are back-scratchers, afraid for their own careers – novelists reviewing their friends’ works. It is very dishonest.”