Wednesday, October 18, 2006

So snarky

I came across an essay by Walter Goodman of the Times from 1983 on the very interesting topic of "literary invective." I suppose if some culture reporter from the Times was doing a similar piece today, they'd talk a lot about, for example, how "snarky" a lot of discussion on the internet is, as if people were nice and respectful toward each other until Al Gore invented the internet a few years ago. Alas, using the famous dispute between Mary McCarthy and Lillian Hellman as a starting point, Goodman points out that literary disputes, in particular, have been plenty nasty in the past.

Some of the better ones:

1. Carlyle, apparently a real SOB,
a. on Emerson: "a gap-toothed and hoary-headed ape ... who now in his dotage spits and chatters from a dirtier perch of his own finding and fouling''
b. on Charles Lamb: "I sincerely believe (him) to be in some considerable degree insane"

2. Samuel Johnson
a. on Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son: ''They teach the morals of a whore and the manners of a dancing master."
b. on Horace Walpole: "a babbling old woman"

3. Oscar Wilde on George Meredith: "As a writer, he has mastered everything except language; as a novelist, he can do everything except tell a story; as an artist, he is everything except articulate."

4. Shaw to Chesterton: "I know everything you say is bunkum, though a fair amount of it is inspired bunkum.''

Posted by jwb at 2:29 PM   

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