The other day a friend of mine described a book as Rabelaisian. Taking the opportunity to be a smart-arse, I asked whether he had actually read Rabelais. He quickly assured me he had read Gargantua and Pantagruel, but was suggestively non-specific about how it ended.It’s something we rarely challenge: bandying eponymic references about, usually in an effort to pep up a bland observation. For example, how many writers who have described unwise or just plain stupid actions as “quixotic” have actually ploughed through Cervantes’ “comic novel” (the nine pages I read failed to make the corners of my mouth turn upward). Can they truly understand the conceptual heft of this adjective unless they’ve suffered for it? It’s a major question and perhaps, like Pat Kenny’s interviewing style, no one will ever find an adequate response to it.This heightened awareness of literary etiquette prevents me from acclaiming Vanity Fair journalist James Wolcott as a modern day H.L. Mencken (because, no, I haven’t read him either). Nevertheless, Wolcott’s barbs should elicit a wince of recognition with anyone familiar with some of the grotesques that populate the U.S. media (The dire Ann Coulter is brilliantly dismissed as “the Toxic Toothpick”).Now you can read Wolcott for free, without subsidising VF’s Dominic-Dunne’s-murders-of-the-rich-and-famous crapola that is, I guess, 90% read in the waiting rooms of dental hygienists.