The absolute worst “writers” I have ever run into were the “self-published” arrogant petulant children I ran into on Usenet. The kind who would post their own poems or short articles, then claim that this made them “published authors” and that unless YOU were a Published Author, you had nothing to say on any subject! Cognitive Dissonance Overload (which I pointed out frequently) in that if posting your poem on the Internet made you a “published author”, then this very post makes ME a published author!
Never met a real writer/author, even ones with self-published books, who were even remotely on the same continent in terms of un-earned arrogance.
I think most get along with or ignore each other just fine, but the occasional Gore Vidal (a literary Mikey- “He won’t like it, he hates everyone!”) makes for much more fun press. Writers aren’t like movie stars: they don’t tend to go to premieres in tuxes or have relationships with world-famous actors/actresses (Arthur Miller being the exception) or be people you want to see nekkid, so there’s not a lot about them to headline grab; when you do have one who’s willing to trash others it’s going to get the most space in the interview and the publicity might sell books so publishers probably love it, so it becomes a game.
I’m currently reading a book of letters between Shelby Foote and Walker Percy and it’s amazing how civil they are about other writers, even when they don’t like them. (Foote was a disciple of Faulkner, for example, while Percy acknowledged Faulkner had great talent but he personally wasn’t a big fan; reverse that with Flannery O’Connor, who Percy saw as little short of an avatar of the madonna and Foote saw as talented but overrated and probably would have been brilliant at 50 but didn’t make it that long.)
One of the few writers Foote trashed was, actually, Gore Vidal: he hated the novel Lincoln; I suppose Vidal didn’t see him as a worthy enough adversary to go after.
I was interested in MFA programs for a season and joined some message boards of other MFA program applicants and graduates seeking publication. While there are many successful writers I think are hacks (Dan Brown, Dean Koontz, and, at her worst, Anne Rice), I’m not exaggerating when I say you can’t name a single solitary successful writer that these people would not trash 18 ways to Sunday. Be it JK Rowling, Marcel Proust, Albert Camus, or their aunt Irma’s veal cookbook, they were a chorus of Vizzini from Princess Bride trashing Socrates and Aristotle.
If they liked a writer, rest assured it would be one most people (including most readers) had never heard of. Ideally it would be one who only sold 19 copies of his novel, the main character of which was a gay lawn ornament who spoke in iambic pentameter about the futility of life, and bonus points if the writer was dead (kind of like Napoleon, who would eulogize a dead comrade for hours before he’d pay a compliment to a living one who might be a rival).
Ok, yes- we all know that sometimes a person who isn’t that famous will attack someone much more famous and in the hopes they’ll raise their own profile in the process. But for the most part I don’t think that’s what is going on here. With the possible exception of other writers, nobody cares if writers fight unless they’re already famous (John le Carre vs. Salman Rushdie/Christopher Hitchens, for example). It’s tough to get buzz about a fight if nobody knows either of the participants. And it’s not 1975. Talk shows don’t book a lot of writers, whether they are fighting or not.
Did you maybe mean to post different links? Because I’m not seeing an article by a writer who has different opinions on the importance of having likable characters than some other writers, or even an article about one (apparently not very successful) writer who carried out one-sided vendettas on Wikipedia, as being examples of writers fighting with other writers. The Wikipedia thing is weird and unpleasant, but that guy sounds like a lone nut.
I don’t have a dog in this fight, but I thought he wasn’t particularly well-inclined towards those who asked for their stories to be withdrawn from The Last Dangerous Visions.
Maybe Dan Brown is a poor writer technically and his plots silly, but people like to read his work nonetheless. Those who want to trash him should try doing what he does better than he does.
Oh come on. I agree that writing is hard, but you can sure as hell criticize someone who’s awful at any given job/vocation/skill even if you have no ability in it.
I see this happening more and more on the indie circuit: Everybody wants the “buzz” so that people outside of the indie community will read their work, but nobody outside of the indie community with the exception of friends/family will read their work because they’re not “names”.
This is similar to me or friends I know trashing Justin Bieber and then someone saying you should try to sing like that. Nah… I’ll just stick to trashing
My personal opinion on the LDV is that Harlan dug himself a hole and then kept shoveling.
But that was a personal issue of differences over a failed business matter. A literary feud is totally removed from that: all the feuds I’ve ever heard of involved writers fighting over literary reputation or political preferences or some other outside cause.
If you’re extending writers’ fights to include every business transaction that ever went wrong, we’re in a whole new ballgame. Then, sure, every writer who ever lived was in fights all the time. Even I, the epitome of sweetness and reason, had a huge fight, if you can believe that.
But by that definition every other person who ever lived is in fights constantly. There’s no way you can make writers special.
Ok, I agree with the well known writers it’s just ego. In some of those cases it may be the reporter trying to gain attention by publicizing the feud few people would even know about.
The point here are that people Trash him while aspiring to do the same thing he does. He may be a terrible writer, but he produces work people want to read. He is hardly awful at writing when millions buy his books; he’s just very good at a particular type of writing that many don’t like.
Note that I wrote that “I hear”== I never claimed to have intimate knowledge of science fiction writers; in fact I am simply basing that on what others who do read science fiction have told me. That being said, if I implied knowledge on my part I do apologize. However you have me curious about the SFWA president. Since you are correct that I do not have an intimate knowledge of that community, I would politely ask that you explain why things got ugly and what specifically about the message boards that you found so offensive.
Something about accumulating 200 rejection slips that kinda dampens one’s ego!
I don’t know about the nominee for President, but the SFWA newsletter, in printed form, and their BBS discussion board, were real hot-beds of furious nastiness. Just damned mean. The SDMB doesn’t even come close, not even in the BBQ Pit!
Many of the same things that set people off here. Misogyny, homophobia, religion, political preferences. I can’t quote anything said in the private sections and you can’t paraphrase nastiness. However, it’s part of the public record that Theodore Beale was one of the candidates. But the same hot button discussions can be found in many non-election related threads.
And then the mods stepped in. Which brought exactly the reaction you’d also see here.
