“Do you often speak so authoritatively on subjects you know so little about?” — June 22, 2005
“If you’re going to raise consiciousness, you’ve got to post something that actually wakes people up, not something so tired.” — March 8, 2006
“That’s priceless, Ed. You calling us smug. Read your own post’s title, man.” — April 12, 2006
“Why not indeed but you seem more interested in tripping through the pages of your own well-ordered mind than through the pages of literature, however defined. Your piece should more properly be called In Praise of Me and My Expensive Education–Willeford seems like a sidebar to the main story here, you.” — August 9, 2006
“As a writer, Ed seems to rarely consider audience. He’s got his vision of how things should be, how people should think, even how they should behave and his M.O. over and over is to either get them to move them towards him, or, if they refuse to do so, dismiss them. It’s hard to fault Ed for being Ed.” — March 19, 2007
“This is the most smug and self-serving ‘apology’ I have ever seen. You are a bad interviewer not because you ‘fail to connect’ (please), but because you feel it necessary to showcase yourself in your interviews.” — May 4, 2007
“What the Ed critics don’t seem to realize about Ed is that in Ed’s world, art exists only in relation to Ed, not the world at large. He’s on record saying that he takes art, ‘personally’ that something he thinks is bad ‘offends him.”” — June 18, 2007
“This is not to say that Ed is a bad person. The flipside of the same attitude is that he’s likely deeply caring and loyal to those he holds close, the kind of person who is willing to sacrifice himself for a friend. Unlike most of us, he also probably doesn’t feel envy when a friend has success, even the kind of success he wishes for, because he views their success as a positive indicator of his own good sense. It is a form of narcissism, but a good form. (Narcissism isn’t a de facto bad thing, but simply a personality descriptor in the same way, ‘shy’ would be. In fact narcissism to some degree is almost a pre-requisite for personal success and emotional well-being.)” — July 18, 2007
“Will you listen to yourself? How on Earth does ‘2006’ somehow make ‘a few years ago’ not sloppy? And yet you still bluster on in full attack mode.” — November 11, 2007
“One explanation might be that your perceptions, judgments, and writings are thoroughly distorted by an apparent emotional immaturity. But again, that’s for each individual reader to decide. Peace out.” — November 17, 2007
“Seems to me we’re back to the same grievance-and-jealousy axe-grinding we always saw at Return of the Reluctant.” — February 7, 2008
“I don’t know if you realize it, but you’re abusive pretty much all the time now. I used to be a regular reader of The Return of the Reluctant and have, regrettably, only been popping in here occasionally, and the change is remarkable.” — July 22, 2008
This is probably the most self-serving and narcissistic post I’ve seen in this website’s history. Why don’t you get a day job like everybody else?
Oh come on, Ed. How can you be so delusional? All you think about here is yourself. You carry on with the most superficial literary swagger I’ve seen. Sometimes, you make even Keith Gessen look like the world’s most generous soul.
I have to agree with what DrMabuse has to say. I’ve been reading this site for years, waiting for Ed to get outside of his head. But he can’t. I think Lee Siegel was right not to call him a writer. He is, at best, a hot dog vendor of words. Sure, he’s amusing at times. But not nearly amusing enough. And I think I’ve had enough. Consider your RSS feed unsubscribed.
Well, that’s just priceless, Ed. Leaving comments on other comments about your blogging. Does it get any more self-absorbed than that? Or is this some kind of bullshit metafictional game that only YOU seem to know about? Either way, this isn’t amusing. Why don’t you think about people other than yourself?
Oh, and your interviews are narcissistic too. Is there a single person in New York who loves the sound of his own voice more than Ed Champion? You suck.
Ed, I like you. And that’s not only because we share the same first name.
Not sure what motivated this entry, but it put me in quite the retrospective frame of mind. I’ve been reading your stuff for something like seven or eight years now, and even (especially?) when something you’ve written has pissed me off, I’ve had to admire, not just your courage in laying yourself out there and taking the slings and arrows with far more toughness and grace than I’d be capable of, but also your capacity for intelligent, honest introspection. You are confounding, complex, and elusive, but never boring.
And to trot out my current fave quote: “Woe to you when all men speak well of you.” (Luke 6:26)
hmmm. the old beat them at their own game ploy eh? Nice.
I’m still chuffed that you once quoted a little tut-tut of mine in a Segundo intro!
You’ve got a pretty perceptive set of readers, there, Ed. I’d have to agree with them. (heh).
Let’s see, how much more meta can we get.
You forgot the best one: “Fuck Ed. In the ear.”
That’s from me.
Oh, Ed.
[…] The good news is it looks like in some form the brilliant Bat Segundo Show will return to the airwaves. The bad news is, is that in the interim Ed is starting to pick petty fights and lose his mind. […]
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I was once criticized by someone thusly: ‘You are the future of literature.’
That one, that – that really stung.