Mean Girls, literary-style

Cady: And they have this book, this "burn book" where they write mean things about girls in our grade.
Janis: Well what does it say about me?
Cady: You're not in it.
Janis: Those bitches!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I do love a good literary slap fight.

I was reading an article today (courtesy of JF) that authors should pay it forward with blurbs--meaning that if they've received the all-important jacket endorsements from other authors, then they should repay that by blurbing other writers as well. Somehow, I don't think this is the kind of thing that article writer had in mind:
The 50 Best Author Vs. Author Put-Downs of All Time.

It's basically a love letter to writer-on-writer violence. And it's funny, not least because a good percentage of them are taking potshots at people who died long before, and thus can't avenge themselves or hold grudges--in print or otherwise. It's the literary way. The sexist ones and the death-wishing ones are less entertaining, but all part of the same unfortunate bitchy package, I suppose.

Some of my favorites:

22. Gertrude Stein, according to Wyndham Lewis (1927)
"Gertrude Stein's prose-song is a cold black suet-pudding. We can represent it as a cold suet-roll of fabulously reptilian length. Cut it at any point, it is the same thing; the same heavy, sticky, opaque mass all through and all along."

23. Emile Zola, according to Anatole France (1911)
"His work is evil, and he is one of those unhappy beings of whom one can say that it would be better had he never been born."

26. Marcel Proust, according to Evelyn Waugh (1948)
"I am reading Proust for the first time. Very poor stuff. I think he was mentally defective."

27. William Faulkner, according to Ernest Hemingway
"Have you ever heard of anyone who drank while he worked? You're thinking of Faulkner. He does sometimes -- and I can tell right in the middle of a page when he's had his first one."

Being an abstainer himself, Hemingway is clearly the authority on the evils of drinking. And some of them are just painful. Hemingway again:

39. James Jones, according to Ernest Hemingway (1951)
"To me he is an enormously skillful f#*&-up and his book will do great damage to our country. Probably I should re-read it again to give you a truer answer. But I do not have to eat an entire bowl of scabs to know they are scabs...I hope he kills himself...."

(Just...yeah.)

Anyway, it reminds me of one of my favorite Dorothy Parkerisms: "If you haven't got anything nice to say...come sit by me." Now good old Dotty, she could give an anti-blurb and a half. I'm a little surprised she didn't turn up here. Maybe they're saving that for Volume 3, 'cause goodness knows there's plenty more material where this came from.