I genuinely don’t understand the pleasure in manufactured vitriol.
I have some strong opinions. I enjoy debating them, but prefer not to get all frothy mouthed about it. Agreeing to disagree is still possible with civility when it becomes clear the positions are irreconcilable.
I much prefer a bit of banter. Humour is a much underrated human trait. If the legions of the po faced woke, and some of the more extreme commenters here, could occasionally laugh at themselves, the world would be a better place.
Still, don’t knock it til you’ve tried it. I googled Dhaliwal and Jones. Based on two Wikipedia articles I’m a solid Dhaliwalian. A pox on the miserable Jonesites with their pathetic emotional incontinence.
The conclusion I almost inevitably come to with these feuds is that they’re both as bad as each other. In different ways, for sure, but that’s a distinction without a difference.
The only exception to this in the above list is HG Wells versus Henry James. HG Wells is more readable today, but was a eugenics-favouring compulsively-ma5turbating philandering socialist buffoon. I don’t know anything about Henry James’ personality or private life, but he’d have had to be really going for it to come close to Wells in the ‘bad as each other’ stakes. So on that basis, and in gratitude for The Turn of the Screw, I’d take Henry’s side.
There’s a woman journalist ( can’t remember her name ) who every week fills a page in the Sunday Times accusing members of the Royal family of parasitism !
Yup, camp Dhaliwal for me too. I’ll hold the coats….
Madeleine Jones
2 years ago
If you ever want a smile, I suggest a quick web search of author feuds. Although not on the same level – it’s interesting to discover what writers think of each other. Tolstoy wasn’t keen on Shakespeare, and Austen never won over Charlotte Bronte (I think? It was a Bronte sister, I’m sure).
I find the rugged, fiesty individualism of writers fascinating. But it’s missing. I’m sure cancel culture and social media play their part.
Oh, and Sally Rooney? If she’s eager to snap words with a writer, well, I am game 🙂
Drahcir Nevarc
2 years ago
I am a not-famous poet, and have tried my damnedest without response to initiate a feud with the famous not-poet Joe Dunthorne over the sheer McGonagallesque awfulness of his “Poem in which I Practice Happiness”, which for some unfathomable reason the New Statesman saw fit to publish in 2016:-
I love pigeons even
when their claws are stumps
and they walk as though in heels.
I love guinea pigs
for the idea they are in some way
a pig. Their heartbeats make their bodies
vibrate. I like to pretend
to answer them. Whom may I say is speaking?
I love football. More people love football
than love social justice
but that doesn’t mean football
isn’t brilliant. Whenever I head the ball
I feel a poem evaporate.
I hate the bit of the poem
where you’re obliged
to hate something.
I love the piano.
I love true crime.
I love the sun
when it arrives
like a tray
of drinks.
The ghastliness of Dunthorne’s poem crops up here and there in my verse. Here are some lines from the middle of Book 1 (of a projected 4; I’m halfway through Bk3) of The Wokeiad. J____ is of course Owen Jones. This excerpt relates the demon/goddess Wokeness’s rescue of Jones from his attempted suttee on a burning of books:-
Wokeness aloft on gentle Zephyr’s breeze
Above this bonfire of the vanities,
Looks down in some disquiet at the blaze.
“The fashion’s not for sacrifice these days.
What vaunting Jupiter, what martial boast
Commemorates the burning of the toast? 270
I want to jerk my puppet on a string,
Not barbecue him like a chicken wing.”
Wokeness in winged dishonour now descends,
Her steps to J____’s bedsit straightway tends,
And finds the conflagration in full blaze.
“The remedy for fire’s a nice cheap phrase,
The squalidest epitome of lame
Is what serves best to extinguish a flame,”
So Wokeness roots about for a cliché,
Some stale quatrain with meter gone astray, 280
Some rancid ode with meretricious rhyme,
Sifts through Victoriana, beatnik, grime,
Discards McGonagall, Bukowski too,
And finds that Ferlinghetti won’t quite do.
The Staggers moulders in the bedsit loo,
Which J____ peruses when he does a poo.
This more in expectation than in hope
Wokeness scans thereof each abusive trope,
Between its glued-together pages finds
The jismop of Joe Dunthorne’s tiny mind, 290
The slimy pus of an inflamed abscess:
‘Poem In Which I Practice Happiness’.
What editor would publish this affront,
Of she-hyena’s womb th’aborted runt?
Dunthorne ‘loves pigeons when their claws are stumps’
And 21 more lines of Forrest Gump.
Apollo groans and crumples up his wreath,
And sage Athene’s rusting spear is sheathed.
“Res ipsa!” Wokeness cries, “the very thing
To extinguish a fire or block a spring.” 300
Wokeness takes up the mouldy paper sheet
And lays it like some barbecuing meat
Upon the conflagration of great works.
Last edited 2 years ago by Drahcir Nevarc
Jeff Butcher
2 years ago
Flannery O’Connor on Ayn Rand: “She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.” Hilarious!
Adapted by Matt Taibbi who said that Robin DiAngelo’s ‘White Fragility’ was so dumb it made ‘The Art of the Deal’ read like the Brothers Karamazov
Jean Nutley
2 years ago
I am of the opinion that these feuds are driven by narcissism, resentment and jealousy in equal measure. If you doubt it, try reading MS Jones column in the Mail on Sunday magazine. Nothing but self pitying twaddle. Much acclaimed apparently, all I can say if that is the yardstick, Gawd help us all.
Jonathan Andrews
2 years ago
The thing is about JB that on those rare (?) occasions she talks bollocks, it’s entertaining ajd spirited bollocks
Galeti Tavas
2 years ago
I think you need to cross out ‘Writers’ and put in ‘Celebrities’ as your piece seems to really mean that.
Lesley van Reenen
2 years ago
I must admit that I immediately googled the first two characters mentioned….(well certainly not Brad and Angelina).
I had to do the same, and am now of the opinion that those two deserved each other.Shame that they divorced,now there will be four unhappy people instead of two.
Jon Redman
2 years ago
a “successful metropolitan journalist, in her forties, aching for fame” who is drunk, fat and pleasures herself in the office toilets.
Didn’t you have a character in your novel who did the same? I’m sure I remember an incident of this nature in the Elizabeth Hurley audiobook reading of it that Loaded (or someone) gave away.
Terry Needham
2 years ago
“This war of words — Punch and Judy without the baby or the violence — is still going on despite the fact they divorced in 2007.” Clearly a writer I will never be. The whole point of divorcing someone is to ensure that you never have to argue with them or think about them again – ever. Divorce is shorthand for buggeroffanddie.
I genuinely don’t understand the pleasure in manufactured vitriol.
I have some strong opinions. I enjoy debating them, but prefer not to get all frothy mouthed about it. Agreeing to disagree is still possible with civility when it becomes clear the positions are irreconcilable.
I much prefer a bit of banter. Humour is a much underrated human trait. If the legions of the po faced woke, and some of the more extreme commenters here, could occasionally laugh at themselves, the world would be a better place.
Still, don’t knock it til you’ve tried it. I googled Dhaliwal and Jones. Based on two Wikipedia articles I’m a solid Dhaliwalian. A pox on the miserable Jonesites with their pathetic emotional incontinence.
Come and ave a go if yer think yer ard enough.
The conclusion I almost inevitably come to with these feuds is that they’re both as bad as each other. In different ways, for sure, but that’s a distinction without a difference.
The only exception to this in the above list is HG Wells versus Henry James. HG Wells is more readable today, but was a eugenics-favouring compulsively-ma5turbating philandering socialist buffoon. I don’t know anything about Henry James’ personality or private life, but he’d have had to be really going for it to come close to Wells in the ‘bad as each other’ stakes. So on that basis, and in gratitude for The Turn of the Screw, I’d take Henry’s side.
There’s a woman journalist ( can’t remember her name ) who every week fills a page in the Sunday Times accusing members of the Royal family of parasitism !
Yup, camp Dhaliwal for me too. I’ll hold the coats….
If you ever want a smile, I suggest a quick web search of author feuds. Although not on the same level – it’s interesting to discover what writers think of each other. Tolstoy wasn’t keen on Shakespeare, and Austen never won over Charlotte Bronte (I think? It was a Bronte sister, I’m sure).
I find the rugged, fiesty individualism of writers fascinating. But it’s missing. I’m sure cancel culture and social media play their part.
Oh, and Sally Rooney? If she’s eager to snap words with a writer, well, I am game 🙂
I am a not-famous poet, and have tried my damnedest without response to initiate a feud with the famous not-poet Joe Dunthorne over the sheer McGonagallesque awfulness of his “Poem in which I Practice Happiness”, which for some unfathomable reason the New Statesman saw fit to publish in 2016:-
I love pigeons even
when their claws are stumps
and they walk as though in heels.
I love guinea pigs
for the idea they are in some way
a pig. Their heartbeats make their bodies
vibrate. I like to pretend
to answer them. Whom may I say is speaking?
I love football. More people love football
than love social justice
but that doesn’t mean football
isn’t brilliant. Whenever I head the ball
I feel a poem evaporate.
I hate the bit of the poem
where you’re obliged
to hate something.
I love the piano.
I love true crime.
I love the sun
when it arrives
like a tray
of drinks.
The ghastliness of Dunthorne’s poem crops up here and there in my verse. Here are some lines from the middle of Book 1 (of a projected 4; I’m halfway through Bk3) of The Wokeiad. J____ is of course Owen Jones. This excerpt relates the demon/goddess Wokeness’s rescue of Jones from his attempted suttee on a burning of books:-
Wokeness aloft on gentle Zephyr’s breeze
Above this bonfire of the vanities,
Looks down in some disquiet at the blaze.
“The fashion’s not for sacrifice these days.
What vaunting Jupiter, what martial boast
Commemorates the burning of the toast? 270
I want to jerk my puppet on a string,
Not barbecue him like a chicken wing.”
Wokeness in winged dishonour now descends,
Her steps to J____’s bedsit straightway tends,
And finds the conflagration in full blaze.
“The remedy for fire’s a nice cheap phrase,
The squalidest epitome of lame
Is what serves best to extinguish a flame,”
So Wokeness roots about for a cliché,
Some stale quatrain with meter gone astray, 280
Some rancid ode with meretricious rhyme,
Sifts through Victoriana, beatnik, grime,
Discards McGonagall, Bukowski too,
And finds that Ferlinghetti won’t quite do.
The Staggers moulders in the bedsit loo,
Which J____ peruses when he does a poo.
This more in expectation than in hope
Wokeness scans thereof each abusive trope,
Between its glued-together pages finds
The jismop of Joe Dunthorne’s tiny mind, 290
The slimy pus of an inflamed abscess:
‘Poem In Which I Practice Happiness’.
What editor would publish this affront,
Of she-hyena’s womb th’aborted runt?
Dunthorne ‘loves pigeons when their claws are stumps’
And 21 more lines of Forrest Gump.
Apollo groans and crumples up his wreath,
And sage Athene’s rusting spear is sheathed.
“Res ipsa!” Wokeness cries, “the very thing
To extinguish a fire or block a spring.” 300
Wokeness takes up the mouldy paper sheet
And lays it like some barbecuing meat
Upon the conflagration of great works.
Flannery O’Connor on Ayn Rand: “She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.” Hilarious!
Adapted by Matt Taibbi who said that Robin DiAngelo’s ‘White Fragility’ was so dumb it made ‘The Art of the Deal’ read like the Brothers Karamazov
I am of the opinion that these feuds are driven by narcissism, resentment and jealousy in equal measure. If you doubt it, try reading MS Jones column in the Mail on Sunday magazine. Nothing but self pitying twaddle. Much acclaimed apparently, all I can say if that is the yardstick, Gawd help us all.
The thing is about JB that on those rare (?) occasions she talks bollocks, it’s entertaining ajd spirited bollocks
I think you need to cross out ‘Writers’ and put in ‘Celebrities’ as your piece seems to really mean that.
I must admit that I immediately googled the first two characters mentioned….(well certainly not Brad and Angelina).
I had to do the same, and am now of the opinion that those two deserved each other.Shame that they divorced,now there will be four unhappy people instead of two.
Didn’t you have a character in your novel who did the same? I’m sure I remember an incident of this nature in the Elizabeth Hurley audiobook reading of it that Loaded (or someone) gave away.
“This war of words — Punch and Judy without the baby or the violence — is still going on despite the fact they divorced in 2007.”
Clearly a writer I will never be. The whole point of divorcing someone is to ensure that you never have to argue with them or think about them again – ever. Divorce is shorthand for buggeroffanddie.
“.”