From Korea With Criticism

Before critic Dale Peck created an uproar with his vituperative reviews ("Rick Moody is the worst writer of his generation"), there was a Mr B.R. Myers, who created many ripples himself with an article entitled 'A Reader's Manifesto' published in The Atlantic in the summer of 2001. In this piece -- later published as a book - he attacked the repetitiveness and pretension of authors such as Don DeLillo, Annie Proulx, Cormac McCarthy, Paul Auster and David Guterson. But who was Myers? As the Wall Street Journal pointed out at the time, "No-one seems to have met him."

Turned out that the New Jersey-born Myers lectures in fluent Korean on North Korean literature, culture and society at Korea University's regional campus, an hour south of Seoul. Read the fascinating profile here.