What writer--or reader--hasn't experienced it? That stab of alarm at seeing someone else praised, or that surge of schadenfreude at seeing someone else trashed. And afterwards, the faint stench of guilt rising like steam from the wound, with its odor of corroded metal.
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link found on andrewsullivan.com, who also included clive james' amusing verse:
The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am pleased.
In vast quantities it has been remaindered
Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been seized
And sits in piles in a police warehouse,
My enemy's much-prized effort sits in piles
In the kind of bookshop where remaindering occurs.
Great, square stacks of rejected books and, between them, aisles
One passes down reflecting on life's vanities,
Pausing to remember all those thoughtful reviews
Lavished to no avail upon one's enemy's book --
For behold, here is that book
Among these ranks and banks of duds,
These ponderous and seeminly irreducible cairns
Of complete stiffs.
The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I rejoice.