Authors Electric

Who doesn’t love a good brawl between writers…from the safety of the stands? Though the bad boy glory days are gone in our cancel ’em corporate culture, not long ago bad press and scandal were generally tickets to ride.              Ernest Hemingway knocked the stuffing out of the twenty-years-older Wallace Stevens and went on to boast about it. He hit Max Eastman on the head with a heavy tome after  Max claimed in a review that Hem wore glued-on chest hair. And he got good press, though he lost, from his boxing match with Morley Callahan.             Norman Mailer, Hem’s disciple, headbutted Gore Vidal in a TV interview. Norm went on to stab his wife and pound for fifteen minutes on Thomas Pynchon’s door, enraged by a bad review–only to learn that Pynchon had fled down the back fire escape.             Hunter...

Enter the Zone of the Big Time Boo-Hoo. You've just received the report card for your latest book or whatever. And you've received a C or D...or even an E or an F. Suddenly the A's, B-Pluses and B's you've received  have a pall cast over them. You feel slimed and vilified. Then, by degrees, worse happens. You start to wonder if They're right...and end up feeling crushed. Poor you. Life doesn't get too much tougher than becoming a poor crushed tomato. You envy hapless newbies who've earned their own rotten report cards. They'll grow as they go...or go under. But you? You're a veteran in the Arena and you've spent decades refining your craft. Still, you're receiving E's and F's for the very things you chose to do...and which you feel sure you've done well. What to do? Hemingway wrote that if we believe the good things people say about our work, then we must believe the bad. But did he practice what he preached? Aft...

"Hello, this is Gore Vidal," the sardonic East Egg baritone from the receiver rendering identification redundant, "is Richard there?" I stammered a return greeting and his voice continued, "I read your story," and then halted. That previous Sunday in June 1982, a story of mine about Gore Vidal's campaign for the California Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, had indeed run. The early '80s boom in newspaper classifieds at least partially explained the luxuriant length of my "perspective" piece entitled The Plight of the Writer in Politics  which keyed off the upcoming Democratic primary pitting Vidal against soon-to-be-ex-Governor-and-later-to-be-Governor-again, Jerry Brown. For most of an hour the novelist, screenplay-writer, wit, social critic, television personality, movie actor and, what few seemed to recognize, very much the politician, held forth. We talked about his Senate campaign and the primary election several week...

Brawls are fun to enjoy from the bleachers. And the first great literary feud still has a lot to teach us. Meet the two combatants now. In the left corner, Lord Byron (aka George Gordon): Born in 1788. 5'8". Lover, boxer, swimmer, marksman and literary rock star. Drank wine from a human skull and had sex with his half-sister. In the right corner, Robert Southey: Born in 1774. A 6' former rebel who turned coat for a government pension. Became Poet Laureate when Walter Scott declined. Sang prolifically then for his supper. Fight genesis: Motives seem murky. Southey may have seen in Byron the sins he wished he'd been blessed to commit, while Byron saw in Southey the staid bore he feared he'd become. But three factors combined to stir up the big brawl: -- 1818 . Byron took quick playful shots at Southey in the Dedication of Don Juan. Though Lord B's English Bards & Scotch Reviewers had lambasted everyone nine years before, his new dig at Sou...