# We get that you hate that earlier writer. Stop kicking him, okay? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 16, 2006, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-get-that-you-hate-that-earlier-writer-stop-kicking-him-okay/364675 "2006-07-16T00:12:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2006, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-get-that-you-hate-that-earlier-writer-stop-kicking-him-okay/364675/1 "2006-07-16T00:12:21Z")
Nobody writes in a vacuum. (Okay, there was that one guy in Sumeria who invented cuneiform, but he was the last one.) Every author starts off as a reader, and while some take up the writing craft because they’ve been inspired by the work of their predecessors, others write to refute the themes and messages of others’ work, as though having arguments with dead men. Sometimes this leads to inspired works of literature; other times it’s just _tacky_. Any particularly tacky examples spring to your mind? My nomination is **Philip Pullman**. His mid-90s’ fantasy series, **His Dark Materials** , was marketed as being the “anti-Narnia,” and he’s on record as saying he dislikes the theist themes of Lewis’ work. That’s his privilege, of course, and for most part the series is excellent, whether you agree with Pullman’s anticlerical bias or not. But one scene in the third book, The Amber Spyglass, was so overtly a response to the final volume of **The Chronicles of Narnia** , The Last Battle that it jarred me out of the story: Using a “subtle knife” that can open doors between world’s, the story’s two adolescent protagonists, Lyra and Will, have organized an escape from the Land of the Dead. Meanwhile, Lyra’s estranged father is leading a rebellion against “the Authority”–basically God, or rather a mighty angel who has convinced everyone else in the universe that he is the creator, and now rules as a cruel despot. While both the living children and the vast majority of the dead spirits see the LotD as a grim, colorless, thoroughly horrid expanse, a few ghosts–the only ones who voice any faith in the Authority–claim that everyone else is deluded, and that the landscape is a beautiful land of plenty. The bit with the minority-opinion ghosts seemed tacked on to me, and very odd; it doesn’t add anything to the narrative. However, after a moment’s thought, I realized that Pullman was inverting a similar scene in The Last Battle, in which recently-deceased friends of Narnia, inside a stable that leads to Heaven, see a beautiful table laden with a delicious feast, while unbelievers can perceive only darkness, dirty water, and rotting straw. The similarities between the two scenes is too great to be coincidental, especially given that Pullman has been known to criticize Lewis for “sending Susan Pevensie to hell for liking makeup.” I can’t see any point to including this bit. It makes no sense to anyone who hasn’t already read the **Chronicles** , and for those who have read the earlier work, it disrupts the story to no advantage. What about the rest of you, Dopers–any examples of a writer directly attacking another author in the middle of a story you want to share? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2006, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-get-that-you-hate-that-earlier-writer-stop-kicking-him-okay/364675/2 "2006-07-16T04:07:24Z")
Alternatively, if the earlier writer deserves it, you could kick him harder. ---
**Author:** ![Talon\_Karrde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Talon\_Karrde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Talon_Karrde)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2006, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-get-that-you-hate-that-earlier-writer-stop-kicking-him-okay/364675/3 "2006-07-16T05:27:19Z")
Frank Miller seems to really hate Superman, so in a way his attacks on Superman are jabs at the people who wrote him. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2006, 10:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-get-that-you-hate-that-earlier-writer-stop-kicking-him-okay/364675/4 "2006-07-16T10:38:31Z")
[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase] Alternatively, if the earlier writer deserves it, you could kick him harder. [/QUOTE] Hear, hear! ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2006, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-get-that-you-hate-that-earlier-writer-stop-kicking-him-okay/364675/5 "2006-07-16T11:06:30Z")
There is a run-of-the-mill military SF series called “Starfist” written by a couple ex-mil guys. I picked up the first book in the series when it came out and what do I find in the first couple chapters but a blatant shot at Libertarian SF writer L Niel Smith. Now, I’ve always considered L Niel Smith to be a bit on the crackpot side (well, maybe more than a bit) but is he actually important enough to name the race of villains after in your very first book and basically spend the whole book trying to bash his ideas? Particularly in a book that is supposed to be rock-em, sock-em mil-sf? ---
**Author:** ![Boulter\_s\_Canary](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e79b87/32.png) [@Boulter\_s\_Canary](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boulter_s_Canary)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2006, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-get-that-you-hate-that-earlier-writer-stop-kicking-him-okay/364675/6 "2006-07-17T20:10:28Z")
One of Terry Pratchett’s ‘city watch’ books has a running joke where Nobby Nobbs (iirc) keeps trying to explain a pun but only gets as far as “that is a pune or play on words…” before everybody shouts him down. I took that as a dig at Piers Anthony. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2006, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-get-that-you-hate-that-earlier-writer-stop-kicking-him-okay/364675/7 "2006-07-17T20:13:48Z")
[QUOTE=Boulter’s Canary] One of Terry Pratchett’s ‘city watch’ books has a running joke where Nobby Nobbs (iirc) keeps trying to explain a pun but only gets as far as “that is a pune or play on words…” before everybody shouts him down. I took that as a dig at Piers Anthony. [/QUOTE] Oh but ol’ Piers deserves to be kicked. And hard. ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2006, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-get-that-you-hate-that-earlier-writer-stop-kicking-him-okay/364675/8 "2006-07-17T20:47:03Z")
[QUOTE=Skald the Rhymer] The similarities between the two scenes is too great to be coincidental, especially given that Pullman has been known to criticize Lewis for “sending Susan Pevensie to hell for liking makeup.” I can’t see any point to including this bit. It makes no sense to anyone who hasn’t already read the **Chronicles** , and for those who have read the earlier work, it disrupts the story to no advantage. [/QUOTE] Heh. I hated **The Last Battle** , and thought it would have been funny for Lyra and Will to meet those smug little buggers the Pevensies in The Land Of The Dead. “Buck up, Lu”, said Peter sternly. “Aslan will be along shortly, you’ll see.” “Oh, stop talking rot!”, snapped Edmund. “You’ve been saying that since 1954.” ---
**Author:** ![Boulter\_s\_Canary](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e79b87/32.png) [@Boulter\_s\_Canary](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boulter_s_Canary)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2006, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-get-that-you-hate-that-earlier-writer-stop-kicking-him-okay/364675/9 "2006-07-18T19:41:34Z")
[QUOTE=Anaamika] Oh but ol’ Piers deserves to be kicked. And hard. [/QUOTE] True. Also frequently. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2006, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-get-that-you-hate-that-earlier-writer-stop-kicking-him-okay/364675/10 "2006-07-18T20:34:58Z")
In **Happy to Be Here** , Garrison Keillor wrote an essay critical of Richard Brautigan, in Brautigan’s style. Ungentlemanly, but kinda funny. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2006, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-get-that-you-hate-that-earlier-writer-stop-kicking-him-okay/364675/11 "2006-07-18T20:55:43Z")
In **Happy to Be Here** , Garrison Keillor wrote an essay critical of Richard Brautigan, in Brautigan’s style. Ungentlemanly, but kinda funny. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2006, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-get-that-you-hate-that-earlier-writer-stop-kicking-him-okay/364675/12 "2006-07-18T22:30:16Z")
Back in the 1930s, Corey Ford, writing as John Riddell, (a “clever rearrangement” of the letters in his name) did a monthly series of “reviews” of popular books of the day as parodies of their styles and voices. One of the best series of humor pieces ever. (Collected as The John Riddell Murder Case, Meaning No Offense, and In the Worst Possible Taste.) In the 1940s Wolcott Gibbs of The New Yorker wrote a profile of Henry Luce, founder of Time magazine, entirely in the bizarre editorial style that Time then used. (Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind. Where it will all end knows god.) Luce wasn’t amused. Nothing is new under the sun. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2006, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-get-that-you-hate-that-earlier-writer-stop-kicking-him-okay/364675/13 "2006-07-18T22:37:20Z")
Mark Twain’s kicking of James Fenimore Cooper is legendary, and well-deserved. Of course, no one reads Cooper anymore nowadays. ---
**Author:** ![Ghanima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Ghanima](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ghanima)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2006, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-get-that-you-hate-that-earlier-writer-stop-kicking-him-okay/364675/14 "2006-07-18T22:55:01Z")
Edward Abbey seemed to have a bit of the love/hate thing with Henry Thoreau, as evidenced by some of his essays in “Down the River”. At least, that’s what I got out of it. Lots of people like to compare the two…I think he was exploring their differences. This probably doesn’t count. Never mind. ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2006, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-get-that-you-hate-that-earlier-writer-stop-kicking-him-okay/364675/15 "2006-07-18T23:11:52Z")
[QUOTE=Lemur866] Mark Twain’s kicking of James Fenimore Cooper is legendary, and well-deserved. Of course, no one reads Cooper anymore nowadays. [/QUOTE] [A link to the full text: _Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses_.](http://www.hereinstead.com/sys-tmpl/bmarktwainonjfcooper) Laugh-out-loud funny, and one of the greatest critical essays in the English language. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2006, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-get-that-you-hate-that-earlier-writer-stop-kicking-him-okay/364675/16 "2006-07-18T23:29:36Z")
[QUOTE=Lemur866] Mark Twain’s kicking of James Fenimore Cooper is legendary, and well-deserved. Of course, no one reads Cooper anymore nowadays. [/QUOTE] plus there are places in Twain’s fiction, such as the infamous ending of _Huckleberry Finn_, that I see as kicking the kind of cheesy adventure stories Tom Sawyer would have read. ---
**Author:** ![Rysto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecccb3/32.png) [@Rysto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rysto)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2006, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-get-that-you-hate-that-earlier-writer-stop-kicking-him-okay/364675/17 "2006-07-19T00:44:24Z")
[QUOTE=Case Sensitive] [A link to the full text: _Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses_.](http://www.hereinstead.com/sys-tmpl/bmarktwainonjfcooper) Laugh-out-loud funny, and one of the greatest critical essays in the English language. [/QUOTE] > [@](#): > > The conversations in the Cooper books have a curious sound in our modern ears. To believe that such talk really ever came out of people’s mouths would be to believe that there was a time when time was of no value to a person who thought he had something to say; when it was the custom to spread a two-minute remark out to ten; when a man’s mouth was a rolling-mill, and busied itself all day long in turning four-foot pigs of thought into thirty-foot bars of conversational railroad iron by attenuation; when subjects were seldom faithfully stuck to, but the talk wandered all around and arrived nowhere; when conversations consisted mainly of irrelevancies, with here and there a relevancy, a relevancy with an embarrassed look, as not being able to explain how it got there. That’s brilliant. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2006, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-get-that-you-hate-that-earlier-writer-stop-kicking-him-okay/364675/18 "2006-07-19T02:14:41Z")
[QUOTE=Lemur866] Mark Twain’s kicking of James Fenimore Cooper is legendary, and well-deserved. Of course, no one reads Cooper anymore nowadays. [/QUOTE] Hey, _I_ read Cooper! Of course, I’m a nerd of legendary proportions. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2006, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-get-that-you-hate-that-earlier-writer-stop-kicking-him-okay/364675/19 "2006-07-19T03:06:29Z")
[QUOTE=Skald the Rhymer] Hey, _I_ read Cooper! [/QUOTE] So, did you find Twain’s analysis to be on target? ---
**Author:** ![appleciders](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@appleciders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/appleciders)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2006, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-get-that-you-hate-that-earlier-writer-stop-kicking-him-okay/364675/20 "2006-07-19T04:50:12Z")
I can’t prove the relation, but I always took Cervantes’ line “Let none presume to tell me the pen is mightier than the sword,” to be a dig at ol’ Will. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-get-that-you-hate-that-earlier-writer-stop-kicking-him-okay/364675.md?page=2)