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Fighting Words: Writers Lambast Other Writers - From Aristotle to Anne Rice.

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From: USA Today (Magazine)
Date: 19940901
Author:Kellman, Steven G.

"Reading him is like wading through glue" is how Alfred, Lord Tennyson assessed Ben Jonson, and, whatever readers' own appraisal of Volpone and The Alchemist, the magnificent malice of the remark is likely to stick. When Lionel Trilling cautions: "Shelley should not be read, but inhaled through a gas pipe," one can savor the rancor.

James Charlton presumes that Envy and Enmity are authors' true Muses, at least when writing about colleagues and rivals. In Fighting Words, he collects approximately 400 smears directed by prominent writers at their peers, examples of how the ...

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