9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Literary lights behaving badly, January 20, 2003
This review is from: Literary Feuds: A Century of Celebrated Quarrels--From Mark Twain to Tom Wolfe (Hardcover)
--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 is especially amusing is that Arthur gives a sentence from Stein and then a similar one from Hemingway--"ing's" flying. The effect was bad in Gertrude Stein, and, although improved in Hemingway, it was still bad. Arthur's book is full of these delightfully sly bits of satire.
He also likes to slip in a few literary jokes. For example, British Don F. R. Leavis, who is in combat with C.P. Snow over the famous "Two Cultures," is characterized as saying of his "fellow Fellows": "They can all go to hell. Of course, some should go before the others. One has a responsibility to make discriminations." (Quoted from Frederick Crews, p. 116) Also: "J.B. Priestley...called Leavis a sort of Calvinist theologian...who makes one feel that he hates books and authors...not...from exceptional fastidiousness but...[as a] result of some strange neurosis, as if he had been frightened by a librarian in early childhood." (p. 118)
All in all, a most entertaining and informative read from a fine prose stylist.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Famous Wordsmiths' Feuds More Than a Gossip Report, December 29, 2002
This review is from: Literary Feuds: A Century of Celebrated Quarrels--From Mark Twain to Tom Wolfe (Hardcover)
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 competitive spirit. Mark Twain knew he was a better writer than Bret Harte and could not abide critics who lumped them together as belonging to the same echelon.
Of course, one must not discount that green-eyed monster of envy--the jealousy and bitterness of an outdistanced rival over the fame and financial success of a rival.
Commendable for their style and substance, these true tales of feuding wordsmiths are fascinating, behind-the-scenes glimpses of our (mostly) 20th-century American literati.
Anthony Arthur is the author of Deliverance at Los Banos and Bushmaster, both narrative histories of World War II, and of The Tailor-King: The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptist. He lives in Woodland Hills, California.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The Famous can be Just as Petty as Anyone Else, January 20, 2008
This review is from: Literary Feuds: A Century of Celebrated Quarrels--From Mark Twain to Tom Wolfe (Hardcover)
As a voracious reader myself, I've heard of some of these feuds, but Anthony Arthur summarizes them competently in this volume, Literary Feuds: A Century of Celebrated Quarrels - From Mark Twain to Tom Wolfe. His scholarship is evident and he tells the stories in an interesting manner - kind of like talking to the smartest gossip on the block. The book was a literary guilty pleasure.
For me some of the feuds were more interesting than others. I enjoyed reading about Hemingway and Stein, while I learned nothing new about Twain and Harte. I thought the Wilson/Nobokov tiff was particular clever and filled with intellectual insults where they each struggled for the high road while dragging their relationship through the public gutter. Capote and Vidal was anticlimactic and I suspect there's more to their feud than what's written here, because it didn't seem very satisfying as a "great feud."
I'd recommend reading the parts you're interested in and skipping the authors you care little about. The prose is good and the material juicy. Enjoy
- CV Rick
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