Is that from the early review in Blade, Jeffrey, or something later? J. I tried to post the following quote by Andrew Duncan on MacSweeny’s “The Book of Demons”, but it didn’t appear on the list, so here it is again: “There are various attempts (pp. 37, 60, 76, 103) to link his plight to that of the Jews in the Third Reich; he quotes the line ‘all poets are Jews’ (vse poety zhidy) from a poem by Mandelshtam which became known by being quoted at the head of a poem by Paul Celan. On reflection, I think that the Jewish themes are an attempt to say to the (Jewish) children of his girlfriend that he is a good and understanding stepfather. So the motive has nothing to do with art, but is practical and immediate; and admirable, since he is right to think that becoming a stepfather at forty-eight is not a sinecure or an automatic success. But no one ever persecuted Barry; this is just paranoia again. Being an alcoholic is voluntary, being murdered by Hitler was not. The persecution of poets was a real thing in Rumania and the Soviet Union, but is non-existent in Britain and North America.”