“…just another boring little middle-class boy hustling his way to the top.”

That’s what Gore Vidal had to say about John Updike in 2008.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Nathaniel Hawthorne called him 'the very pimple of the age's humbug.'

Think that’s bad? Examiner.com’s Michelle Kerns has compiled the 50 best author vs. author put-downs, and Vidal’s comment is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Nathaniel Hawthorne called Edward Bulwer-Lytton “the very pimple of the age’s humbug.” James Gould Cozzens declared, “I can’t read ten pages of Steinbeck without throwing up.” Faulkner called Twain “a hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe.”

Read the rest at Examiner.com, and don’t miss Part 2, where Evelyn Waugh wonders if Proust was “mentally defective” and Mark Twain says of Jane Austen, “Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”

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2 responses to ““…just another boring little middle-class boy hustling his way to the top.””

1. 06.07.2010 @ 8:19 pm Paul Dorell says:

   Since writers are such a catty lot, you ought to make a pact now agreeing not to disparage the work of those among you who become famous. On the other hand, a little bad behavior might liven up the site. I don’t often see anyone saying that something they read was awful. You can be critical if your points transcend ego and personal taste.

2. 06.07.2010 @ 8:53 pm Paul Dorell says:

   P.S. I’m really surprised they left this off the list – it’s my favorite:

   On The Dick Cavett Show, Mary McCarthy said she thought Pearl S. Buck, John Steinbeck and Lillian Hellman were overrated. Hellman, she said “is tremendously overrated, a bad writer, a dishonest writer, but she really belongs to the past.” When Cavett asked McCarthy what was overrated about Hellman, McCarthy replied: “Everything. I once said in an interview that every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.’”

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