The flaw in Taylor's portrayal of the romance novelist Angel

Hilary Mantel has some insightful comments in her Foreword to Elizabeth Taylor's 1957 novel, Angel, most notably (and hilariously) noting that Angel is an novel by a shrewd, funny, observant novelist about a novelist who is none of the above. The eponymous Angel, start to finish, in this novel that covers the span of her life, is a narcissist, devoid of wit and humor, a tyrant in the household, cold in every way to family and to her husband, and the author of novels that are at best romantic potboilers, often in poorly rendered exotic settings or distant eras, but that are completely removed from the events and experiences or he life or for that matter in anyone's life - a bad writer. As Mantel further notes, there always will be good writers and bad writers - and the bad writers usually make more money. (Mantel has done all right, though.) And that observation is true only to a point: Angel has her time, but lives far beyond it, and her final books have only minuscule sales (not clear why they're still being published, for that matter). As noted in previous posts, Taylor has inoculated herself against criticism, in that any mistakes she might make in her portrayal of her bitter protagonist pale against the foundational mistakes that Angel makes in her writing - yet I have to say that I think T is fundamentally off base in her characterization of a romance writer. My experiences have shown me that all writers of fiction struggle and suffer and deal w/ failure and frustration - and that as a result writers are almost universally generous and supportive of one another, regardless of genre or talent or sales level. We all know it's so damn hard! (Angel suffers while writing but seems able to produce at will by shutting herself away from the world; she would have been a better writer has she been more open to the world.) John Cheever allegedly said to JP Donleavy, who was being a real asshole during a visit to the Iowa Writers Workshop, that the only real writer who was a shit to other writers was Hemingway, and he was known to be insane. Cheever was right on point I think - and the character of Angel, while a great stalking horse, who provokes in us not only ridicule and hatred but also sorrow and pity, is also off the mark, not, in the end, credible as a writer.