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Literary Feuds

Started by Serge, November 10, 2017, 09:40:28 PM

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Serge

Who doesn't love it when two authors fall out? Here are some of my favourites:

Gabriel Garcia Marquez vs. Mario Vargas Llosa In 1976, Marquez saw Llosa in a cinema and greeted him as an old friend. Llosa strode over, punched Marquez in the face and shouted, "How dare you come and greet me after what you did to Patricia in Barcelona!" Apparently, Llosa had left his wife Patricia a few years earlier to start an affair with a Swedish air hostess, and Marquez had, eh, 'consoled' Patricia shortly afterwards. Llosa and his wife were later reconciled, and she must have told the ardent admirer of Thatcher what had gone on between her and Marquez. hence...



"I'll give you a bit of Magical Realism, pal!"

Paul Theroux vs. V.S. Naipaul Naipaul suspected that Theroux had had an affair with his first wife, so in a fit of revenge, tried to sell a book that Theroux had inscribed to him online for $1500. Theroux found out, and went ballistic. Naipaul told him to 'take it on the chin and move on.' Theroux did so by writing Sir Vidia's Shadow, a book-length slagging of his former pal.

Martin Amis vs. Just About Everybody He's Ever Met Most famously with Julian Barnes, after Amis decided to sign to a new literary agent, Andrew Wylie, leaving his old one, Pat Kavanagh, who happened to be, er, Barnes' wife. Barnes responded by writing a letter hoping that Amis would have as much success as two of Wylie's more famous clients - Salman Rushdie, at that point in hiding because of the fatwa on his life, and Bruce Chatwin, at that point dead from an AIDS-related illness. As if this wasn't enough, he signed off with a cheery 'fuck off'. Amis could take some small comfort from the fact that Wylie managed to get him an advance on his next book which paid for the extensive dental work he wanted.

He took umbrage at Christopher Hitchens jokingly calling someone 'comrade', which spurred him to write the fairly terrible Koba The Dread, in which Amis revealed for the first time ever what a sod Stalin was. Hitchens responded by writing, 'I have lately been reading bushels of stuff about myself, generated by reviews of your book on Stalinism. I wince on my own behalf a good deal as I wade through, but I don't forget to wince for you as well.'

He has also been in public sparring matches with Terry Eagleton (over his fictionalised version of 9/11, which also spurred Chris Morris to write a column called 'The Absurd World Of Martin Amis', in which he called him a 'senile 12-year-old') and Anna Ford (after allegedly smoking over the bed of her cancer-ridden terminally ill husband), among others.



Keebleman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8m9vDRe8fw

Here we can see a feud unfold in real time.  It's Jeremy Kyle only with brainy people.

Brundle-Fly

Quote from: Keebleman on November 10, 2017, 11:28:46 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8m9vDRe8fw

Here we can see a feud unfold in real time.  It's Jeremy Kyle only with brainy people.

Fantastic telly. You don't get people like that on chatshows anymore.

studpuppet

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on November 11, 2017, 03:06:59 PM
Fantastic telly. You don't get people like that on chatshows anymore.

Just imagining how Graham Norton would have handled it.

mr. logic

Once again, words fail Norman Mailer.

Attila

Kind of an oldie, but the prologues to Terence's plays are his platform to handbag slap his critics and detractors.

zomgmouse


Keebleman

#7
Just found this article that Cavett wrote about Mailer.  It was published 10 years ago today.  (Coincidentally, I posted that YouTube link above on the tenth anniversary of Mailer's death.)

https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/in-this-corner-norman-mailer/

Keebleman

And Cavett played a key role in another long-standing literary feud, that between Mary McCarthy and Lillian Hellman.  On his show McCarthy called Hellman a dishonest writer: "Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'."  Hellman sued.

Norman Mailer tried to act as peacemaker!

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/12/16/lillian-mary-and-me

bgmnts

Quote from: Keebleman on November 10, 2017, 11:28:46 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8m9vDRe8fw

Here we can see a feud unfold in real time.  It's Jeremy Kyle only with brainy people.

"We all know I stabbed my wife" is a glorious thing to say.

QDRPHNC

Thanks to this thread I've started on Mailer's The Executioner's Song, and it's fantastic.


bgmnts

QuoteA fellow who comes on a platform and starts reciting about Christopher Robin going hoppity-hoppity-hop (or alternatively saying his prayers) does not do so from sheer wantonness but because he is a helpless victim of circumstances beyond his control

Burn!

Serge


jobotic

Yeah, that was a good read. Thanks.

zomgmouse

"Timothy Bobbin"
That was really cool

Urinal Cake

Buckley v Vidal https://youtu.be/ZY_nq4tfi24
40 years later still the same shit but less eloquently put

shh

Ben Jonson vs Dekker & co. in late Elizabethan times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Theatres

Jonson (as Horace) has Marston (as Crispinus) punished by swallowing a pill that makes him vomit up all the words he's learned. (Could have posted this in the Will Self thread).

Quote from: Ben Jonson
   Cri. O —
   Tib. How now, Crispinus?
   Cri. O, I am sick —
   Hor. A Bason, a Bason, quickly; our Physick works. Faint not, Man.
   Cris. O — retrograde — reciprocal — Incubus.
   Cæs. What's that, Horace?
   Hor. Retrograde, and reciprocal Incubus are come up.
   Gal. Thanks be to Jupiter.
   Cris. O — glibbery — lubrical — defunct — O —
   Hor. Well said; here's some store.
   Vir. What are they?
   Hor. Glibbery, lubrical, and defunct.
   Gal. O, they came up easie.
   Cris. O — O —
   Tib. What's that?
   Hor. Nothing yet.
   Cris. Magnificate.
   Mec. Magnificate? That came up somewhat hard.
   Hor. Ay. What chear, Crispinus?
   Cris. O, I shall cast up my — spurious — snotteries —
   Hor. Good. Again.
   Cris. Chilblain'd — O — O — clumsie —
   Hor. That clumsie stuck terribly.
   Mec. What's all that, Horace?
   Hor. Spurious, snotteries, chilblain'd, clumsie.
   Tib. O Jupiter.
   Gal. Who would have thought there should ha' been such a deal of Filth in a Poet?
   Cris. O — barmy froth —
   Cæs. What's that?
   Cris. — Puffie — inflate — turgidous — ventositous.
   Hor. Barmy froth, puffie, inflate, turgidous, and ventositous are come up.
   Tib. O terrible windy words.
   Gal. A sign of a windy Brain.
   Cris. O — Oblatrant — furibund — fatuate — strenuous —
   Hor. Here's a deal; oblatrant, furibund, fatuate, strenuous.
   Cæs. Now all's come up, I trow. What a Tumult he had in his Belly!
   Hor. No, there's the often conscious damp behind still.
   Cris. O — conscious — damp.
   Hor. It's come up, thanks to Apollo and Æsculapius: Yet there's another; you were best take a Pill more.
   Cris. O, no; O — O — O — O —
   Hor. Force your self then a little with your Finger.
   Cris. O — O — prorumped.
   Tib. Prorumped? What a noise it made! as if his Spirit would have prorumpt with it.
   Cris. O — O — O.
   Vir. Help him; it sticks strangely, what ever it is.
   Cris. O — clutcht.
   Hor. Now it's come; clutcht.
   Cæs. Clutcht? It's well that's come up; it had but a narrow Passage.
   Cris. O ——
   Vir. Again, hold him, hold his Head there.
   Cris. Snarling Gusts — quaking Custard.
   Hor. How now, Crispinus?
   Cris. O — obstupefact.
   Tib. Nay, that are all we, I assure you.
   Hor. How do you feel your self?
   Cris. Pretty and well, I thank you.
   Vir. These Pills can but restore him for a time;
Not cure him quite of such a Malady,
Caught by so many Surfeits, which have fill'd
His Blood and Brain thus full of Crudities:
'Tis necessary therefore he observe
A strict and wholesom Diet. Look you take
Each Morning of old Cato's Principles
A good Draught next your Heart, and walk upon't,
Till it be well digested: Then come home,
And taste a piece of Terence, suck his Phrase
In stead of Liquorish; and, at any hand,
Shun Plautus, and old Ennius; they are Meats
Too harsh for a weak Stomack. Use to read
(But not without a Tutor) the best Greeks,
As Orpheus, Musæus, Pindarus,
Hesiod, Callimachus, and Theocrite,
High Homer; but beware of Lycophron,
He is too dark and dangerous a Dish.
You must not hunt for wild outlandish Terms,
To stuff out a peculiar Dialect;
But let your Matter run before your Words.
And if at any time you chance to meet
Some Gallo-Belgick Phrase, you shall not straight
Rack your poor Verse to give it entertainment,
But let it pass; and do not think your self
Much damnified, if you do leave it out,
When nor your Understanding, nor the Sense
Could well receive it. This fair Abstinence,
In time, will render you more sound and clear:
And this have I prescrib'd to you, in place
Of a strict Sentence; which till he perform,
Attire him in that Robe. And henceforth learn
To bear your self more humbly; not to swell,
Or breath your insolent and idle Spite
On him whose Laughter can your worst affright.