Weekend Stubble

This week The Stranger anointed Marlon Brando's novel Fan-Tan as "The Best Worst Novel Ever Written." But wait! On Wednesday in the New York Sun, Otto Penzler claimed my author Harry Stephen Keeler as "The Worst Writer in the World":

Keeler is to good literature as rectal cancer is to good health. He makes the J.D. Robb novels seem as if they were written by Shakespeare. Given the choice of reading three Keeler novels back to back or being imprisoned in an Iranian jail, you'd need to think about it.

Funny story: at Penzler's own bookshop, a first edition Keeler is one of the most highly valued items in his entire catalogue -- worth 10 times any book that Penzler himself ever wrote.

I'm just saying.