Canadian novelist Douglas Coupland wrote an essay praising Elon Musk as “the smartest person in any room anywhere,” and Twitter is having none of it.

In an article published by the Guardian, the Generation X and Shampoo Planet author came to the defense of Musk, the controversial SpaceX founder and Tesla CEO known for his sometimes incendiary tweets.

Allowing that Musk can be a “dick,” Coupland wrote, “Since when does being a dick somehow invalidate you as a person? It doesn’t. That’s just stupid. And what’s in it for you to dis someone you don’t know, anyway? Being negative is a stupid person’s way of trying to appear smart without actually being smart.”

He went on to praise Musk as a “good father” who “loves his mother” and “swears a lot.”

Twitter was not impressed at Coupland’s paean to the billionaire. Author Jeff VanderMeer wrote, “Was Musk in a room with Douglas Coupland with a couple of heavies putting the squeeze on him as he wrote this? I mean, this seriously bizarre stuff.”

Jonathan Paige tweeted, “i’m assuming douglas coupland got a couple of new teslas out of this.”

A Twitter user by the name of Brooks Otterlake wrote, “The world could learn a lot from Canada...we stopped paying attention to Douglas Coupland years ago.”

Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.