Literary Feuds.

ARTHUR, Anthony (John Updike).

$350.00

Item Number: 5767

New York: St. Martins Press, 2002.

First edition. Octavo, original cloth. Inscribed by the author on the half title page, “For John Updike, with admiration- Anthony Arthur.” Fine in a fine dust jacket. Updike is featured in this volume of feuds.

Arthur has uncovered a treasure trove of stories that offers revealing glimpses into that most entertaining of spectator sports: nasty quarreling among the literati. He pulls together some familiar feuds (Ernest Hemingway versus Gertrude Stein) as well as some more recent, perhaps less well known, dust-ups (Tom Wolfe versus John Updike; Vladimir Nabokov versus Edmund Wilson), and the result is a compelling page-turner. Readers will enjoy seeing the undignified depths eminent authors descend to when petty jealousies and professional disagreements explode into unrelenting verbal warfare. Arthur sometimes spends a little too much time on thumbnail biographies before getting to the good stuff, but in each case the wait is worth it. Along the way, he offers incisive and revealing observations on the writers and their works--always in a prose style accessible to all varieties of readers.