Now That I Have Your Attention

How about that Chris Ware cover? It just kills me. It's so sad, so perfect.

A few years back, Ware's book 'Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid On Earth' won the Guardian First Book award and, presumably for that reason alone, it popped up on 'Late Review'.

Before I go further, I should tell you that 'Jimmy Corrigan' is a massive, and massively ambitious work. It's 380 pages and it doesn't give up all its secrets at once. It's too thick with ideas to finish comfortably in one sitting and it was a deserved winner of the Guardian award.

The book was treated appallingly. Mark Lawson had the nerve to start the discussion on whether the book could be considered literature. Tom Paulin ignored the question and said the book was 'ugly'. Miranda Sawyer danced around the subject and I couldn't understand why she was being so vague. I forget who else was on.

Anyway, some time later I met Miranda and complained about the segment. Miranda is a good egg and I knew she would be completely honest with me.

She looked embarrassed.
"So why were you so vague about it?" I asked her. "It's an astonishing book."
"Well," she replied. "I just didn't have time to really explore it. They gave it to us half an hour before we went on air."

(UPDATE: Thanks to @crgn, I now know that Miranda said straight out on the show that she hadn't read it. As I say, she's a good egg.)