Why are so many novelists so stupid?

If you feel a need to search for moral cowardice then, in my experience, literary festivals are likely to be as happy a hunting ground as any.

Should you be lucky enough to find Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner or Taiye Selasi listed in the programme then, by jove, your ship will have come in. Moral dwarves, each of them.

You see they are, all of them, unhappy that PEN America decided that, this year of all years, it would honour the editors and staff of Charlie Hebdo with PEN’s annual Freedom of Expression Courage award at the organisation’s annual gala. So unhappy, in fact, that they have decided to ‘boycott’ the evening.

According to Ms Kushner, Charlie Hebdo promoted a kind of ‘cultural intolerance’ and insisted upon ‘a kind of forced secular view’. Mr Carey, for his ninnyish part, deplores the ‘hideous crime’ but, naturally, is more concerned about whether it ‘was a freedom-of-speech for PEN America to be so self-righteous about’.