You Said You Were Going to Minsk...

In his bibliography of the works of Pierre Menard, Borges includes this item:

An invective against Paul Valery in the Journal for the Suppression of Reality of Jacques Reboul. (This invective, it should be stated parenthetically, is the exact reverse of his true opinion of Valery).

--Jorge Luis Borges, Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote

Let's see: "Suppression of Reality" -- "exact reverse of his true opinion." Oh, ah, I get it. Cute.

Now this:

Although the forces of cant and triviality are legion in our culture, it is not every day that one encounters a book as foolish, misguided, and supremely irrelevant as this one. Within its torturous pages, [the author] succeeds in gathering together the whole bouquet of human stupidity. By an incredible feat, [he] manages to be both glib and ponderous, simplistic and opaque, lumpen and condescending. .

That's from a review (by Giles Harvey) in the Village Voice (link). The subject (or better, "target") is R. Jay Magill Jr.'s new book. The book is entitled Chic Ironic Bitterness (2007).

Let's see: you say you are going to Minsk so I will think you are going to Pinsk, but I know you are really going to Minsk...

Dear Giles: love ya, baby, Jay.