SOURCE: Scammell, William. “Sorry It's Late, Will This Do?” Spectator 266, no. 8458 (25 May 1991): 32.

In the following review, Scammell offers a negative assessment of U and I.

First I made the usual phone call, to a man I've never met, sitting in a building I've never visited, presiding over the literary half of a magazine I seldom read and whose politics I disapprove of. ‘Anything to review?’, I said. For some perverse reason I like reviewing. It brings in a little money, it flushes out the opposition (those with erroneous attachments), it keeps my name vaguely afloat in the public prints, it allows me to sound off or let fall a quotation (my overnight bag of wisdoms), it keeps my shelves occupied, my right hand busy, and my brain nicely pickled in ink. ‘There's Nicholson Baker’, he said. ‘How do you feel about Nicholson Baker?’ ‘Never heard of him’. ‘He's...