Novelists,’ said IPO, ‘are to the nineties what cooks were to the eighties, hairdressers to the seventies and pop-stars to the sixties… Merely, you know, an expression of the Zeitgeist, Nobody actually reads novels anymore, but it’s a fashionable thing to be a novelist – as long as you don’t entertain people of course. I sometimes think,’ said IPO, his eyes like industrial diamonds, ‘that my sole virtue is, I’m the only person in London who has no intention of writing any kind of novel, ever.

A Vicious Circle