Literary Feuds: A Century of Celebrated Quarrels--From Mark Twain to Tom Wolfe

by Anthony Arthur

Book Overview

A submarine's deadliest antagonist is another sub. Some of our most illustrious writers have tried their best to sink their enemies, using all the weapons at their command-wit, humor, sarcasm, invective, and the occasional right cross to the jaw. In these eight profiles of quarrels between famous authors, Anthony Arthur draws on a lifetime of reading and teaching their works to describe the feuds as lively duels of strong personalities. Going beyond...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 031227209X
• ISBN13: 9780312272098
• Release Date: December 2002
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.8" x 10.5"

Customer Reviews

More than gossip

This is great entertainment but Arthur also uses these anecdotes to illuminate his insights into the nature of literary reputations. Why do some bestsellers and Nobel prizewinners fade into oblivion within a generation? Why do some writers get to be taught in college? (One useful tip is that if you want academic immortality after you are dead you should not make your books too long). Like any anthology it omits some favorites. One of my favorites in the Nabokov-Wilson wars was an acrimonious exchange of letters in the British journal "New Statesman''They were arguing about whether or not Pushkin knew English. Nabokov said he did not. Wilson seemed to have won the battle by proving that he did know a few words. Nabokov wrote conceding the point and saying "Let us end by agreeing that Pushkin had about as much English as Mr. Wilson has Russian."

Excellent context on some well-known feuds

Each chapter of Anthony Arthur's Literary Feuds tackles a different feud. The format is quite simple. Arthur sets forth the historical context of the feud. He recounts many of the "shots fired". Then he offers a brief reappraisal of the feud, and its impact on its participants. The feuds are well-known--Twain/Harte, Hemingway/Stein, the "Two Cultures" debate, McCarthy/Hellman, and other similar literary disagreements. Arthur's style is light without being breezy, informative without being didactic. His critical evaluations are reasonably measured, and interesting rather than annoying or heavy-handed. This is a fun read. It's serious enough to point up the issues, and in particular the similarities as well as the differences in the feud participants. But it's got a straightforward tone, as the author seeks to entertain rather than to preach. All in all, a very good book.

thoroughly enjoyable recounting of eight feuds

Anthony Arthur presents eight literary feuds in chronological order: Mark Twain and Bret Harte, Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, Sinclair Lewis and Theodore Dreiser, Edmund Wilson and Vladimir Nabokov, C.P. Snow and F.R. Leavis, Lillian Hellman and Mary Mccarthy, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal, and Tom Wolfe and John Updike.Arthur is an excellent writer, and it is great fun to read his elegant prose about badly behaved literary types. I was familiar with some of the authors discussed but not all, as I was familiar with some of the animosities but not all of them. Arthur turns a beautiful phrase and has a knack for finding illustrative, sometimes toxic quotes. One good thing about fights between scribes -- they leave lots of luscious things in writing!The eight disputes are interesting by virtue of the characters or the topic or both, and the author does a fine job of describing the people involved and laying out the foundation and history of each quarrel. Moreover, he makes insightful comments about the disagreement or the relative merits of the protagonists. I thoroughly enjoyed these tales of intelligent people behaving poorly.

Literary lights behaving badly

--That is, resplendently at their conniving, back-stabbing, vainglorious best. Anthony Arthur's polished and scholarly accounts of eight famous literary feuds beginning with Mark Twain and Bret Harte, and ending with Tom Wolfe and John Updike, come across as fairly expressed and finely observed. True, with my fabled ability to read between the lines, I can see in places where perhaps the good professor favors one side or the other. Indeed, part of the fun of reading a book like this is discerning where the author's sympathies lie. (You might want to discern for yourself.) But for the most part Professor Arthur lets the chips fall where they may and keeps a balanced keel through the straits of the tempest-tossed tussles while knavishly enjoying himself like an after-the-fact provocateur.Notable are Arthur's physical descriptions of the gladiators, usually quoting contemporary sources. Thus the young Truman Capote, who is squared off against Gore Vidal, is "unnaturally pretty, with wide, arresting blue eyes and blond bangs" (p. 161) while Vidal is "Tall and slender, Byronically handsome...luminous and manly" (p. 159). (Uh...nevermind.) Sinclair Lewis, who fights with Theodore Dreiser (physically on one occasion--or at least Dreiser is reported to have slapped Lewis), has a "hawkish nose" and a "massive frontal skull...reddish but almost colorless eyebrows above round, cavernously set, remarkably brilliant eyes..." (p. 49) Dreiser, self-described, has "a semi-Roman nose, a high forehead and an Austrian lip, with the edges of my teeth always showing...." (p. 56) The effect of these descriptions along with Arthur's bright and lively (and very careful) style is to make the literary warriors especially vivid and to impress upon us just how human they are. Arthur however is at his best in coming up with really juicy quotes to illustrate the matters of contention. Thus Lillian Hellman dismissed Mary McCarthy (Chapter 6) as merely "a lady magazine writer" (p. 141) while McCarthy charged in an interview with Dick Cavett that Hellman "is tremendously overrated, a bad writer, and a dishonest writer..." whose every written word "is a lie, including AND and THE" [my capitalization, p. 143], causing the fur to fly. More civilized was the exchange between Edmund Wilson and Vladimir Nabokov where Wilson expresses his disappointment with Nabokov's novel, Bend Sinister: "You aren't good at...questions of politics and social change, because you are totally uninterested in these matters and have never taken the trouble to understand them." Nabokov replies: "In historical and political matters you are partisan of a certain interpretation which you regard as absolute." (pp. 90-91) (They're just sparring: it heats up later on.)One of the most interesting bits in the book is from page 32 in which it is asserted that Ernest Hemingway learned part of his style from Gertrude Stein (feud number two) by copying her gerund-driven, run-on sentence constructions. What

Famous Wordsmiths' Feuds More Than a Gossip Report

What could have driven Edmund Wilson to betray his friend Vladimir Nabokov? Why was Mark Twain so remarkably mean-spirited toward Bret Harte, going to great lengths to ruin Harte's reputation? Why did F.R. Leavis indulge in character assassination of C.P. Snow? How could a man so celebrated, so revered as Ernest Hemingway let himself be upset by Gertrude Stein, an old woman who had once been his mentor and friend? What demons drove Truman Capote to the miserable death that Gore Vidal called "a good career move"? Why did Lillian Hellman bring a libel suit against Mary McCarthy, accusing her of slander and defamation of character? What caused Norman Mailer to physically assault Gore Vidal at a cocktail party in 1974? Anthony Arthur's latest work, Literary Feuds: A Century of Celebrated Quarrels from Mark Twain to Tom Wolfe, is filled with gossip and vitriolic attacks. Some of our most illustrious writers have tried to destroy the reputations of their enemies, using wit, humor, sarcasm, invective, and the occasional right cross to the jaw. For example, consider these quotations taken from Arthur's work: Ernest Hemingway: "Gertrude Stein was never crazy/Gertrude Stein was very lazy." Sinclair Lewis: "I still say you [Theodore Dreiser] are a liar and a thief." Theodore Dreiser: "He [Sinclair Lewis] is noisy, ostentatious, and shallow. . . . I never could like the man." Mary McCarthy: " Every word she [Lillian Hellman] writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'" Gore Vidal: "It is inhuman to attack [Truman] Capote. You are attacking an elf." It would be a mistake, however, to think Literary Feuds is only a book of juicy gossip. Anthony Arthur, an accomplished literary historian and critic, demonstrates his expertise in literary history and criticism. Arthur, who was a Fulbright Scholar and for many years has taught writing and literature at California State University, Northridge. In the eight essays of this book, Arthur draws on a lifetime of reading and teaching the works of 16 cantankerous writers whom he describes. Arthur scatters insightful comments throughout the work. For example, "As every teacher of literature knows, comedy and satire are harder to teach than tragedy and melodrama; everyone can feel, but not everyone can think." Provocative quotations also abound. For example, Gore Vidal, a "born-again atheist," opines, "The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism." One should not be too eager to search for "opposites" when investigating literary feuds. It does seem, however, that many of the literary artists described in this book are "opposites" in their temperaments, worldviews, politics, or aesthetic tastes. Those who espouse "realism" or "naturalism" are at cross-purposes with those who champion "idealism" or "romanticism." Rural sentiments clash with urban mentalities; elitism and populism collide. The outstanding cause of these feuds, however, was pride and the compet