National Post columnist Robert Fulford has weighed into the book reviewer conflict of interest fray with a resounding “Who gives a bookseller’s ass?” in “Meet the keystone kops of criticism.”
In response to the controversy at the Toronto Star, after a reviewer criticized a book by a publisher that had rejected his own book manuscript, Fulford recalled getting a conflict policy from the Los Angeles Times, and thinking: “How fair, how ethical, how pure — and how stupid!”

Fulford wonders what the “conflict police” would have thought of Edmund Wilson or H.L. Mencken, whose legendary criticism regularly crossed the ethical bounds being asserted today. Why no furore, Fulford wonders, about the issue of quality?

Of course, as The Tyee noted last week, some Canadian critics may be wearying of reviewing novels by people they’ve slept with.