UPDATE: (3/31/2011) Fixed a typo someone pointed out on Reddit.

I’ve written enough about authors that have shown very public displays of ill judgment that it seemed to be almost mandatory that I talk about Mr. Patrick Roscoe (his name is not a link because you absolutely must hear the story before landing on his site.) This is especially true because my list of authorial asshats seems to be overwhelmingly female, and we do need some gender balance.

So what did Mr. Roscoe do? Well, he sent the following to literary agent Colleen Lindsay, to whom he queried for representation. (Unsuccessfully, natch.)

Colleen Lindsay: Thank you for making it clear, through your response to my query, that you are unquipped (sic) to represent fiction writers who are working at the very highest level today. Best of luck with your list of minor writers, third-rate writers, irrelevant writers, non-writers. You lose, silly woman. Patrick Roscoe

Wow. I am sort of in awe of this letter. Here we combine, in only three sentences, a pure distillate of unprofessionalism, arrogance, misogyny, and complete absence of self-awareness. I mean, you got to love the fact that he ranks himself among “fiction writers who are working at the very highest level today,” and yet has to look for representation from someone specializing in representing a “list of minor writers, third-rate writers, irrelevant writers, non-writers.” You just got to love that. And you really got to love the typo in the sentence establishing his literary street cred.

Ok, you’re probably thinking as I did, upon reading the post on Colleen Lindsay’s blog, that we’re just looking at newbie writer syndrome. After all, you don’t expect this kind of behavior from writers who’ve actually published something. This is only logical, since this kind of behavior is quite possibly the best way to prevent being published, short of not writing anything.

But, oh dear, Teresa at Making Light lets us all know that this guy, in fact, has been writing quite a while.

And, yes, he has a website whose ironic pretentiousness you are now primed to appreciate. (And I will draw your attention to his expression on the borderline NSFW author pic. If not for the absence of a bobbing head I would have pegged the shot as having been taken mid-fellation, but I guess he’s only stroking his ego.)