Bad Press: The Worst Critical Reviews Ever!
"Quotes from the most devastating critical reviews ever probes historical magazines to provide the nastiest—and funniest—reviews ever are expertly compiled by Laura Ward. … Bad Press is enthusiastically recommended and highly entertaining."—Library Bookwatch, February 2004"One of the great natural unfairnesses of life is that unkind reviews of books, plays, music—whatever—and especially vicious ones live on in memory and anthologies while favorable ones die young. Here, Ms. Wood, an irrepressible enthusiast for aesthetic savagery, has compiled a magnificent compendium of dismissals. Among my favorites:'The triumph of sugar over diabetes'—George Jean Nathan on the writing of J.M. Barrie.'I love Wagner; but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws'—Charles Baudelaire. And'Farley Granger played Mr. Darcy with all the flexibility of a telegraph pole.'—Brooks Atkinson on a musical version ofPride and Prejudice. But these are just snippets. Some of the most entertaining and even intellectually provocative material comes in pieces far to long to quote here. A delightful romp of critical wickedness."—Michael Pakenham,The Baltimore Sun, September 15, 2002"Great, irresistible fun. Ward is hardly the first to compile a 'lexicon of invective' but she's done it better than anyone in quite a while..."—Buffalo News, November 2002