Authors Putting Down Authors

I read this post about author put-downs, and it goes on all the time… one of the solutions, and it is not easy to sustain, is to read, review and say positive remarks about authors with whom you disagree. But not all care to be peacemakers. I see some who can’t agree with a thing others say, but if their favorite author said the very same thing they’d stand up and applause.

Go to the link to see quite the list of put-downs.

One man’s Shakespeare is another man’s trash fiction.

Consider this pithy commentary on the Great Bard’s work:

With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare….

But, of course, there must be SOME writers we can all agree on as truly great, right? Like Jane Austen. Or not:

Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

Robert Frost?

If it were thought that anything I wrote was influenced by Robert Frost, I would take that particular work of mine, shred it, and flush it down the toilet, hoping not to clog the pipes.

John Steinbeck, surely?

I can’t read ten pages of Steinbeck without throwing up.

Oh, dear.

But don’t think these pleasantries were penned in a frolicsome hour by dilettante book critics with an unslaked thirst for a bit of author-bashing.

The Shakespearean take-down was George Bernard Shaw, the Austen shin-bone basher was Mark Twain, the anti-Frost poet was James Dickey, and the quick!-bring-me-the-bucket-it’s-Steinbeck was James Gould Cozzens.