Mark Twain, Austen Hater
One man's Shakespeare is another man's trash fiction.
Consider this pithy commentary on the Great Bard's work:
With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare....
But, of course, there must be SOME writers we can all agree on as truly great, right? Like Jane Austen. Or not:
Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice,' I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.
Robert Frost?
If it were thought that anything I wrote was influenced by Robert Frost, I would take that particular work of mine, shred it, and flush it down the toilet, hoping not to clog the pipes.
John Steinbeck, surely?
I can't read ten pages of Steinbeck without throwing up.
Oh, dear.
But don't think these pleasantries were penned in a frolicsome hour by dilettante book critics with an unslaked thirst for a bit of author-bashing.
The Shakespearean take-down was George Bernard Shaw, the Austen shin-bone basher was Mark Twain, the anti-Frost poet was James Dickey, and the quick!-bring-me-the-bucket-it's-Steinbeck was James Gould Cozzens.
Yes, hell hath no fury like one author gleefully savaging another author's work.
And, lucky for us, there's plenty to be had where that came from.
Cast your eye on these, the 50 most memorable author vs. author put-downs (in no particular order; though if you've got a favorite, by all means, comment on it, below).
Hemingway: writer of bells, balls, and bulls
1. Ernest Hemingway, according to Vladimir Nabokov (1972)
As to Hemingway, I read him for the first time in the early 'forties, something about bells, balls and bulls, and loathed it.
2. Miguel Cervantes' Don Quixote, according to Martin Amis (1986)
Reading Don Quixote can be compared to an indefinite visit from your most impossible senior relative, with all his pranks, dirty habits, unstoppable reminiscences, and terrible cronies. When the experience is over, and the old boy checks out at last (on page 846 -- the prose wedged tight, with no breaks for dialogue), you will shed tears all right; not tears of relief or regret but tears of pride. You made it, despite all that 'Don Quixote' could do.
3. John Keats, according to Lord Byron (1820)
Here are Johnny Keats's p@# a-bed poetry...There is such a trash of Keats and the like upon my tables, that I am ashamed to look at them.
4. Edgar Allan Poe, according to Henry James (1876)
An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.
5. John Updike, according to Gore Vidal (2008)
I can't stand him. Nobody will think to ask because I'm supposedly jealous; but I out-sell him. I'm more popular than he is, and I don't take him very seriously...oh, he comes on like the worker's son, like a modern-day D.H. Lawrence, but he's just another boring little middle-class boy hustling his way to the top if he can do it.
6. William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, according to Samuel Pepys (1662)
...we saw 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life.
7. Edward Bulwer-Lytton, according to Nathaniel Hawthorne (1851)
Bulwer nauseates me; he is the very pimple of the age's humbug. There is no hope of the public, so long as he retains an admirer, a reader, or a publisher.
Charles Dickens writing something rotten, vulgar, and un-literary
8. Charles Dickens, according to Arnold Bennett (1898)
About a year ago, from idle curiosity, I picked up 'The Old Curiosity Shop', and of all the rotten vulgar un-literary writing...! Worse than George Eliot's. If a novelist can't write where is the beggar.
9. J.K. Rowling, according to Harold Bloom (2000)
How to read 'Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone'? Why, very quickly, to begin with, and perhaps also to make an end. Why read it? Presumably, if you cannot be persuaded to read anything better, Rowling will have to do.
10. Oscar Wilde, according to Noel Coward (1946)
Am reading more of Oscar Wilde. What a tiresome, affected sod.
11. Fyodor Dostoevsky, according to Vladimir Nabokov
Dostoevky's lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity -- all this is difficult to admire.
12. John Milton's Paradise Lost, according to Samuel Johnson
'Paradise Lost' is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is.
13. Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield, according to Mark Twain (1897)
Also, to be fair, there is another word of praise due to this ship's library: it contains no copy of 'The Vicar of Wakefield', that strange menagerie of complacent hypocrites and idiots, of theatrical cheap-john heroes and heroines, who are always showing off, of bad people who are not interesting, and good people who are fatiguing.
14. Ezra Pound, according to Conrad Aiken (1918)
For in point of style, or manner, or whatever, it is difficult to imagine anything much worse than the prose of Mr. Pound. It is ugliness and awkwardness incarnate. Did he always write so badly?
15. James Joyce's Ulysses, according to George Bernard Shaw (1921)
I have read several fragments of 'Ulysses' in its serial form. It is a revolting record of a disgusting phase of civilisation; but it is a truthful one; and I should like to put a cordon around Dublin; round up every male person in it between the ages of 15 and 30; force them to read it; and ask them whether on reflection they could see anything amusing in all that foul mouthed, foul minded derision and obscenity.
16. George Bernard Shaw, according to Roger Scruton (1990)
Concerning no subject would he be deterred by the minor accident of complete ignorance from penning a definitive opinion.
Goethe, author of the worst book Samuel Butler ever read
17. Jane Austen, according to Charlotte Bronte (1848)
Why do you like Miss Austen so very much? I am puzzled on that point. What induced you to say that you would rather have written 'Pride and Prejudice'...than any of the Waverly novels? I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses.
18. Goethe, according to Samuel Butler (1874)
I have been reading a translation of Goethe's 'Wilhelm Meister.' Is it good? To me it seems perhaps the very worst book I ever read. No Englishman could have written such a book. I cannot remember a single good page or idea....Is it all a practical joke? If it really is Goethe's 'Wilhelm Meister' that I have been reading, I am glad I have never taken the trouble to learn German.
19. John Steinbeck, according to James Gould Cozzens (1957)
I can't read ten pages of Steinbeck without throwing up. I couldn't read the proletariat crap that came out in the '30s.
20. Herman Melville, according to D.H. Lawrence (1923)
Nobody can be more clownish, more clumsy and sententiously in bad taste, than Herman Melville, even in a great book like 'Moby Dick'....One wearies of the grand serieux. There's something false about it. And that's Melville. Oh dear, when the solemn ass brays! brays! brays!
21. Jonathan Swift, according to Samuel Johnson (1791)
Swift has a higher reputation than he deserves...I doubt whether 'The Tale of a Tub' to be his; for he never owned it, and it is much above his usual manner.
22. Gertrude Stein, according to Wyndham Lewis (1927)
Gertrude Stein's prose-song is a cold black suet-pudding. We can represent it as a cold suet-roll of fabulously reptilian length. Cut it at any point, it is the same thing; the same heavy, sticky, opaque mass all through and all along.
23. Emile Zola, according to Anatole France (1911)
His work is evil, and he is one of those unhappy beings of whom one can say that it would be better had he never been born.
24. J.D.Salinger, according to Mary McCarthy (1962)
I don't like Salinger, not at all. That last thing isn't a novel anyway, whatever it is. I don't like it. Not at all. It suffers from this terrible sort of metropolitan sentimentality and it's so narcissistic. And to me, also, it seemed so false, so calculated. Combining the plain man with an absolutely megalomaniac egotism. I simply can't stand it.
25. Mark Twain, according to William Faulkner (1922)
A hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven sure fire literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.
Comments
Christ, I thought the whole Korn vs Slipknot fued was brutal. (Sad part is thats been the only 'metal' fued lately).
I'm a Hemingway fan; did a master's thesis on him. No. 1 is the best.
The GBS quote on Ulysses is entirely unfair! It is taken from his response to a prospectus sent from Shakespeare and Company. He was *NOT* saying Ulysses was a bad book. He was saying that it was a book that painted an accurate picture of Dublin as he (GBS) saw it and that people should read it!
What a great article! I think I'm going to be coming back to this one a lot! Hope it gets you lots of hits!
You spelled Faulkner wrong.
#22 Best of List.
Who does Nabokov think he is?
A great writer, and he's right.
Couid Nabokov think? I doubt his IQ was over 60.
"That's not writing, it's typing." -- Truman Capote on Jack Kerouac's "On The Road."
You spelled Nabokov incorrectly as well.
@Nabokov: This is why writing while half asleep in the middle of the night is never, ever a good idea. Thanks.
This reads more like a classic clash of the titan egos to me- pure sour grapes.
my money on william hazlitt re his friend coleridge for best literary dis ever, "everlasting inconsequentiality marks all he does."
I wish writer gossip/disses/love life, etc., were still hot copy because some of the dirt dished in writing communities--from love affairs to professional rivalries--is the stuff of great soap operas, maybe even good novels. Today only actors and musicians rate that kind of attention.
Do we have any writers/poets today hot enough to spark public interest in their personal lives or angst? It used to be some good ego clashes could sell a few books. Sigh. What's happened to the world? :-)
I got a kick out of this.
Nordette Adams
African-American Books Examiner
This has been a great reminder that different writing appeals to different people. I love Nabokov, Twain, Updike, Salinger, Capote. I hate Shakespeare, Wilde, etc.
That's writing.
What, none of Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer slinging mud at each other?
What about Hemingway's entire story "A Matter of Measurements" from A Moveable Feast? The stuff when they're peeing next to each other is classic classic disses on F. Scott Fitzgerald, directly challenging his manhood.
Authors are some mean mofo's.
Ahhh, as a playwright, who shall remain nameless, I don't like my fellow playwrights much either. (bunch of talentless jerks) So it just appears that writers do not like other writers for some reason. Maybe because we all know we're all just a bunch alcoholic frauds with God-complexes. (i.e.) Die you manipulative religious-obsessed John Patrick Shanley, and shove your Pulitzer up your chimney.
great article!
Don't get me started on Faulkner. My mother is a fish? My ass.
My question is: if Mark Twain hated Jane Austen why does he say 'every time I read it?' Wouldn't once have been enough? Ditto Noel Coward's slam on Oscar Wilde: "Am reading MORE OF"? as if the first dose wasn't sufficient? I'm sure most of these slams were meant to be witty, and I agree with a number of them, but ... wit used for the sake of nasty doesn't work for me.
PLEASE spell Edgar Allan Poe correctly.
@rklein: Ditto what I said to Nabokov. It's a mercy that I didn't spell my own damn name wrong. Oh wait, maybe I should check that....
I like Samual Johnson's response to a would-be author:
Your book is both good and original - unfortunately the parts that are good are not original and the parts that are original are not good."
Letterman's recent line about Sarah Palin's book is not bad: "It's an excellent book ..for standing on when you're reaching for a better one."
@rklien: don't be such a nitpicky bookwormed biatch
I'd like to hear the replies to some of these. :-)
supposedly, Truman Capote was asked to review Kerouac's On the Road, and replied, "That's not writing, it's typing"
i got a kick out of alot of these... but faulkner was way off base about twain.
Faulkner's points about Twain seem to apply to himself. Strange.
Michelle, you missed the best, this exchange between Faulkner and Hemingway:
First, William Faulkner, speaking of Ernest Hemingway: ‘He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.’
And Hemingway’s response: ‘Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?’
Read a compilation called "The Best of Bad Hemingway," a collection of winning submissions to the Harry's Bar & American Grill Imitation Hemingway Competition, mixed in with stories by famous authors writing their best parodies of Hemingway's style. A must-read for Hemingway haters, but probably just as enjoyable for Hemingway lovers.
Funny!
LOL this was fantastic. Yes writers are critical of their counterparts, but with good reason. It keeps us in our own niche and our own style. Knowing what you don't want to be like is similar to how you define yourself. (maybe is an ingrown trait to help combat subconscious plagiarism as well). As a writer you have to know how to define yourself and what you want from your writing (and consequently, you end up believing that this is the only way to write as well!) I have a friend that is 'trying' to be a writer and i've tried helping him, but, of course, he thinks his way is the way and I, of course, disagree! Writers will forever bump heads. Isn't it the same with other arts?
Mark Twain wrote an entire essay entitled "James Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses". The whole thing is great, but my favorite part is the 2nd paragraph: "Cooper's art has some defects. In one place in Deerslayer, and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record."
Also, Oscar Wilde on Dickens' "Old Curiosity Shop": 'One would have to have a heart of stone to read about the death of little Nell without laughing.'
Your comments are as good as the insults. Well done, but where was Truman Capote?
Stephen King. Untouchable...again.
I question Mark Twain's hatred of Jane Austen. Why would he read Pride and Prejudice more than once if he disliked it so much ("Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice,' I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.")?
The compiler has settled on some mediocre instances. Three examples: Bloom has made far more acerbic comments on Rowling than the one above; Nabokov made a great sport of skewering Dostoevsky, but this representative remark is bland and doesn't add the useful comment that Nabokov despised Freud more than he despised Dostoevsky. Finally, why quote Twain on an author seldom read today? Twain's clever dissection of James Fenimore Cooper in "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" - in addition to being very instructive - is littered with delicious insults of Cooper's style (or lack thereof).
The compiler has settled on some mediocre instances. Three examples: Bloom has made far more acerbic comments on Rowling than the one above; Nabokov made a great sport of skewering Dostoevsky, but this representative remark is bland and doesn't add the useful comment that Nabokov despised Freud more than he despised Dostoevsky. Finally, why quote Twain on an author seldom read today? Twain's clever dissection of James Fenimore Cooper in "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" - in addition to being very instructive - is littered with delicious insults of Cooper's style (or lack thereof).
Then there's the famous comment from Anthony Hope (author of "The Prisoner of Zenda") after watching J.M.Barrie's "Peter Pan": "Oh, for an hour of Herod!"
Havel says:
more than he despised Dostoevsky. Finally, why quote Twain on an author seldom read today?""
Pride and Prejudice has reached a new audience with "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies." It will be inescapable, save for the underside of a rock, when the film comes out.
Great article.. it is fun to see how authors can go at each other much like spouses or lovers.. or politicans!
I mentioned your article today in my piece about Twain being Examined. Keep up the good work!
What? No quote from _The Dunciad_?
What a great article! Well done, my dear. I'm glad none of those will ever read one of mine. I'd curl up in a ball and die. Celia
This is great! Besides illustrating that good writing is subjective, you have generated interesting dialogue among those who have additional stories to contribute. Well done!
Who the hell is Harold Bloom? And he was way off with Harry Potter. Ha.
A very interesting concept...author against author. Funny how many of them felt about another author and to write about it. Kinda sad in a way. You can think those things, but to say them in public...
Shakespeare spake of that wot ye not know ... Bacon's coded reference to the spiritual enlightenment of man remains unheeded. All other coffee-table acessories are unnecessary except the Bible and Dante ... read em and weep.
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