7 Infamous Literary Rivalries

No matter which renowned writer you find yourself at odds with, you're in good company: These authors certainly didn't shy away from clashing with each other.

1. Gore Vidal vs. Norman Mailer

The notorious rivalry ignited when Vidal likened Mailer to Charles Manson. When Mailer later struck Vidal at a party, Vidal didn’t miss a beat, quipping, “Once again, words fail Norman Mailer.” Here they are exchanging barbs on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971. Mailer had headbutted Vidal backstage.

2. Bret Easton Ellis vs. David Foster Wallace

"Saint David Foster Wallace: A generation of readers who admire him think it makes them smarter, but it's all part of the pretentious act. Fools." "David Foster Wallace exuded a literary air of pretension that made me ashamed to be even remotely associated with the publishing world..." "DFW is the prime example of a modern male author striving for a kind of profound greatness he just couldn’t grasp. A fraud."

However, Foster Wallace wasn’t exactly fond of Easton Ellis either. In his 1988 essay “Fictional Futures and the Conspicuously Young,” he seemed to dismiss the younger writer:

"The attitude conveyed here is reminiscent of shallow neo-classicists who believed that to avoid vulgarity was not just necessary but a guarantee of value, or insecure academics who mistake obscurity for depth. It's equally frustrating."

3. Salman Rushdie vs. John Updike

Tensions flared between Rushdie and Updike in 2005 when Updike reviewed Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown, remarking, “Why, oh why, did Salman Rushdie... name one of his central characters Maximilian Ophuls?”

''A name is just a name,'' Rushdie responded sharply. “‘Why, oh why’ ...?' Well, why not? Somewhere in Las Vegas, there’s probably a male escort named 'John Updike.'”

He further criticized Updike’s most recent work, Terrorist, calling it “absolutely dreadful. He ought to stick to his small-town realm and write about wife-swapping, because that's what he’s good at.”

4. Henry James vs. H.G. Wells

Once close friends, Wells understandably became upset when his buddy James included him among the authors he deemed to be producing “affluents turbid and unrestrained.” In retaliation, Wells called James a “painful hippopotamus,” and from there, the two exchanged scathing (yet elegantly crafted) letters back and forth.

5. Joseph Conrad vs. D.H. Lawrence

"D.H. Lawrence had shown promise, but ultimately went astray. Filth. Simply obscene." That was how sculptor Jacob Epstein summed up Conrad’s view of Lawrence. And this was before Lawrence wrote Lady Chatterley's Lover! Conrad didn’t seem fond of many of his peers—Epstein noted that Conrad felt George Meredith's characters were "ten feet high" and believed Herman Melville "[knew] nothing of the sea."

Lawrence disagreed, stating, "[Melville's] vision is far more grounded than Conrad's, because Melville doesn’t romanticize the ocean and its unfortunate souls. Cry over a wet handkerchief like Lord Jim." He also argued that pessimism "permeates all of Conrad’s work and those like him—the Writers among the Ruins. I can’t forgive Conrad for being so miserable and giving in."

6. John Keats vs. Lord Byron

"You mention Lord Byron and me," Keats wrote to his brother in 1819. "There is a significant difference between us. Byron describes what he observes—I describe what I imagine—Mine is the more difficult task."

Experts agree that Keats felt the competition more acutely than Byron—Byron, on the other hand, seemed mostly annoyed that they were ever mentioned together. He even managed to express a sarcastic eye-roll when he wrote to John Murray in 1821 to confirm Keats's passing:

"Is it true, as Shelley writes, that poor John Keats died in Rome because of the Quarterly Review? I am very sorry for him—though I believe he chose the wrong path as a poet, was ruined by Cockneyfying and Suburbing, and versifying Tooke's Pantheon and Lempriere's Dictionary. I know from experience that a scathing review is like Hemlock to a fledgling author—the one on me (which inspired English Bards &c.) knocked me down, but I got up again. Instead of exploding from anger, I drank three bottles of claret and began writing a reply, finding that there was nothing in the article for which I could justly knock Jeffrey on the head in an honorable way."

7. Charles Dickens vs. Hans Christian Andersen

This famous literary duo met only once, but that was more than enough for Dickens. In 1857, Andersen, a long-time admirer of Dickens, managed to secure an invitation to the writer’s estate in Gad’s Hill. While Andersen was utterly charmed—"Dickens is one of the most amiable men I know, possessing as much heart as intellect," he wrote—the feeling was not mutual. Before Andersen had even arrived in England, Dickens had already begun mocking his visitor. "He speaks no language but his own Danish and is suspected of not even knowing that," he told a friend.

The visit itself didn’t fare much better. You know the saying about houseguests and fish? Apparently, Andersen hadn’t heard it. Instead of staying for a week, as planned, Andersen overstayed and stayed for five. When he finally departed, Dickens left a note in the guest room, which read, “Hans Christian Andersen slept in this room for five weeks—which seems to the family AGES!” They never met again, and Dickens eventually refused to correspond with him altogether.

Do you love reading? Are you eager to discover fascinating facts about authors and their works? Then grab our new book, The Curious Reader: A Literary Miscellany of Novels and Novelists, out May 25!