Edward St. Aubyn

A frenzied competition for a major British literary award pits several colorful characters against one another and is complicated by an accidental entry, a scandal involving a judge and a vengeful reject. By the award-winning author of the Patrick Melrose series. 50,000 first printing.

A Novel

Lost for Words

Gavin

Brutal Booker Prize satire. 

  
'The measure of a work of art is how much art it has in it, not how much ‘relevance’. Relevant to whom? Relevant to what? Nothing is more ephemeral than a hot topic.' 


The targets I recognised were 'Wolf Hall', 'how late it was, how late' - and, among the judges, Stella Rimington, Chris Mullin, Malcolm Rifkind / Jim Murphy(?) Sam certainly sounds like Patrick, too:

  
Like a man walking backwards along a path, erasing his footsteps with a broom, he had tried, through contradiction, negation, paradox, unreliable narration and every other method he could devise, to cancel the tracks left by his words and to release his writing from the wretched positivity of affirming anything at all.


There's also an exquisite send-up of Deleuzian/Lacanian raving.

Lost for Words A Novel

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