David Kipen: Doesn't anyone believe this man?

In a column for the Guardian, Alison Flood notes the story carried on MobyLives earlier this week about NEA Director of Literature and Melville House author David Kipen‘s threat to eat a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird if he can’t get everyone in the town of Kelleys Island, Ohio (population 128) to read the book. Actually, Flood seems to question Kipen’s sincerity by noting that writer John Sutherland had said last year that if Salman Rushdie‘s The Enchantress of Florence didn’t win the Booker Prize, he’d “curry [his] proof copy and eat it.” Flood notes dryly, “It didn’t. And he didn’t.”