I guess he got kicked out of the sandbox

Sir Anthony Sher, a Shakespearean actor and the author of four novels over a two-decade period, is fed up and plans to quit writing. Why? Because of an “exclusive literary club” that is conspiring against him:

Sir Anthony Sher, the acclaimed actor, writer and artist, yesterday launched a bitter critique of the exclusivity of the literary world. Sher, who voiced his concerns on stage during the Cheltenham Festival, described how he had struggled in vain for wider publicity surrounding the publication of his four novels.

However, he attributed the apparently limited reviews and commercial success to what he perceived as the “closed doors” of an elitist literary club.

“The literary world is a sort of club that lets some people in and some not,” he complained, “and for some reason I wasn’t let in. The way that they let you know you’re not going to be let in is they don’t review your book. Or they review it so slowly it dies at birth and the publishers don’t want to publish your books any more.”

Now, don’t get me wrong, in that a lot of Sher’s criticisms are valid, but to cry conspiracy seems a tad self-serving. Never mind that by doing so, and having major papers write about it, now he gets the publicity he craves and perhaps even a new contract out of it. Brilliant, I say…