I’m continuing to be vastly amused by Fighting Words:  Writers Lambast Other Writers–from Aristotle to Anne Rice.  In case you ever find yourself in a situation where, I don’t know, you must save yourself from a herd of ravenous man-eating wildebeest by smack-talking a famous author, you could do worse than learn from the greats.  Here, in no particular order, are my favorite examples of writers dissing other writers not by criticizing their work, but skipping over all that “professional” stuff completely and going for the jugular.  In other words, writers demonstrating that they are not nice people by attempting to demonstrate that other writers are not nice people.

He was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull everywhere.  He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him great.–Samuel Johnson, on Thomas Gray

Gibbon’s style is detestable; but it is not the worst thing about him.–Samuel Coleridge, on Edward Gibbon

Perhaps “alive” is scarcely the word one would apply to that “luminary” of the Lake District.  Wordsworth drew his first orderly and deliberate breath in 1770, and continued the alternative processes of inhalation and exhalation until 1850.–Ezra Pound

It was good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle marry one another and so make only two people miserable instead of four.–Samuel Butler, on Thomas Carlyle

Henry James has a mind so fine no idea could violate it.–T. S. Eliot

The nicest old lady I ever met.–William Faulkner, on Henry James

An excellent man:  he has no enemies; and none of his friends like him.–Oscar Wilde, on George Bernard Shaw

The effect upon women is such that they want to go right out and get him and bring him home stuffed.–Dorothy Parker, on Ernest Hemingway

The greatest mind ever to stay in prep school.–Norman Mailer, on J. D. Salinger

He is as pretentious as a rich whore, as sentimental as a lollipop.–Norman Mailer, on Jack Kerouac