Literary Trivia

Literary Feuds

DOROTHY PARKER AND CLARE BOOTHE LUCE
Parker never resisted an opportunity to attack her bete noire. One day she was going through a door with her. Luce gestured Parker to go first with the words “Age before beauty,” to which Parker replied, “And pearls before swine,” as she marched through. When someone pointed out to her that Luce was kind to her inferiors, Parker blurted out, “And where does she find them?”

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE AND ALBERT CAMUS
Theirs was always an uneasy relationship. Sartre admired Camus as a writer, but found his philosophizing flaky. He also had problems with what he deemed to be his preachiness and air of “somber self-importance.” Camus, for his part, thought Sartre was bourgeois.

W.B. YEATS AND SEAN O’CASEY
After Yeats rejected O’Casey’s play The Silver Tassie in 1928, O’Casey left Ireland in a fit of pique, going into permanent exile in Devon. He found it difficult to forgive the man who had once spoken of him as Irish literature’s brightest light.

SAMUEL BECKETT AND JAMES JOYCE
These two Irish expatriates became close friends in Paris in the 1930′s, Beckett acting as Joyce’s secretary as well as his friend. The relationship faltered after Joyce’s mentally handicapped daughter Lucia fell in love with Beckett and Beckett failed to reciprocate the emotion. One day, Beckett called to see Joyce and Lucia answered the door. “I’m here to see your father,” said Beckett, “Not you.” Joyce never forgave him.

OSCAR WILDE AND GEORGE MOORE
Moore essentially saw Wilde as a plagarist. “His method of literary piracy,” he said, “Was along the lines of the robber Cacus, who dragged stolen cows backwards by their tailsk into his cavern so that their hoofprints might not lead to detection. Wild said equally enchantingly of Moore: “He leads his readers to the latrine and locks them in.”

WILLIAM FAULKNER AND ERNEST HEMINGWAY
These two drunks had many quarrels about one another’s styles. “Hemingway,” said Faulkner, “has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.” Hemingway countered: “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? I know all the ten-dollar words as well as he does, but I prefer the older, simpler ones.”

FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY AND IVAN TURGENEV
The goading between them was both professional and personal. Dostoevski found Turgenev overbearing and lampooned him in print. Turgenev retaliated by dubbing Dostoevski “a pimple on the face of literature.”

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW AND OSCAR WILDE
Their rivalry was at a constant simmer. Wilde once said “Shaw hasn’t an enemy in the world, and none of his friends like him.”