Happy Birthday, Mr. Tolstoy!

Today, in 1828, was born Leo Tolstoy - one of the greatest writers and philosophers of all time. A master of realistic fiction, Tolstoy was critically acclaimed in his early 20s with the semi-autobiographical trilogy Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth, which are now a must-read at Russian schools.

Tolstoy was anti-government and anti-church, as the authority of both he greatly contested. As a result, he was watched by the Russian secret police most of his life, and, at the end of it, he also got excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church (in 1901).

He was a complicated persona full of paradoxes and extravagant habits. Coming from a noble family (Tolstoy was referred as Count Tolstoy in the society), the writer liked to plough and sweat working hard in the fields among the common people and farmworkers, which constituted a solid slice of then Russian society. Tolstoy tried to understand how 'the soul of a peasant worked' but eventually gave this attempt up. Instead, he started making shoes that he gave as presents to his numerous family members. 

At the age of 18, Tolstoy began writing a diary - a habit he was faithful to his whole life. 

In honour of his birthday, Tolstoy's official web-page made public the rarest of the writer's notes - 55 diary journals, which have been kept within the Tolstoy family all this time, were digitalized so that everybody could have a better idea what kind of a person the writer really was.

You can download them here for free [only in Russian]. 

Writers Who Had Good Taste

When it comes to writers, literary taste is considered to be their most, if not solely, important quality. But when it comes to people whose profession is a writer, it's not only their taste in words that we judge. It's their taste in many other things - manners, eloquence, gallantry, elegance, and, of course, their taste in clothing. After all, how else do you make an impression on people who haven't read your books yet?

OSCAR WILDE
1854-1900, Dublin-Paris

First thing that comes to mind when mentioning Wilde's name is his belles lettres, inexhaustible wit and most beautiful style of writing. A true jeweller of words, Oscar Wilde supplied many literary almanacs with famous aphorisms and deep insights into human nature.
It is known that his mother, Jane Francesca Elgee, used to dress little Oscar in girl's clothing - perhaps, to take revenge for having a boy instead of a long-wished girl.

In Oxford, Wilde was always ultra-fashionably dressed, sporting culottes (knee-breeches commonly worn in the late Middle Ages and early Rennaisance by upper-class gentlemen), silk stockings, lemon-coloured gloves, and a waistcoat embroided with flowers. Every piece he wore, however, was chosen with perfected taste of a true dandy. Just like Wilde's writing style, his clothes were always artful, memorable, and elegant.

Oscar loved neckties and neckerchiefs, buttonholes, and jabots. Usually he would always have a cigar or wear a stylish cane. And at winter a coat with a big fur collar was a must.

Oscar Wilde was a true reveller: he loved expensive things, first-sort hotels, restaurants, beautiful people - such as Alfred Douglas, also known as "Bosie". Wilde mercilessly spent his fortune on trying to please the young man, whom he spoilt with expensive gifts and whose every caprice he indulged.

VLADIMIR NABOKOV

1899-1977, Saint-Petersburg - Montreux

"I'm an American writer, born in Russia, educated in England, where I studied French literature before moving to Germany for fifteen years... My head speaks English, my heart speaks Russian and my ear speaks French." - Vladimir Nabokov

Nabokov's famous phrase clearly characterizes his cosmopolitanism, which was mostly, of course, oblidged by his life circumstances. Born into the family of then-famous polititian, little Volodia got an excellent education at home.

Nabokov loved to read. He swallowed the books in impressively huge portions, and always seemed to be needing more. According to some sources, at his juvenile age Nabokov read about 3000 books in 3-4 years. By 14-15 years Vladimir had read, or re-read, complete works of Tolstoi in Russian as well as all works of Shakespeare in English and Flaubert in French. 

The light shade of aristocratism cultivated in Nabokov´s childhood also extended to his dressing, which, however, was always well-balanced without any kitchy details. Nabokov loved tweed jackets in light or dark colours, classic shirts and tennis outfits. The random visitors of Swiss forests, where the writer used to spend most of his spare time hunting for butterflies, were always amazed at this elderly but prompt and lively man wearing a cap and golf socks, running about among the thickets with a butterfly net.

Many people considered Nabokov to be lofty and arrogant mostly due to his elegant manner of speaking and ridiculously extensive vocabulary. And indeed, some of his novels are a hard nut to crack. In reality, however, Nabokov was a very friendly and cheerful person with a contagious laughter of a child. A child who was always wearing a superb, excellent-fitting suit.

Nabokov's suit Nielsen and Cie

Shoes Bata Goodyear

Writer's pince-nez and etui

ARTHUR MILLER

1915-2005, New York - Connecticut

There is an opinion that Arthur Miller (not to confuse with Henry Miller) owes his fame to his even more famous wife - Marilyn Monroe. They were married for 4 years, and, of course, this marriage became the most examplary and immaculate in the U.S. society of the 20th century. 

He - a macho and an intellectual, supplying theatrical world with first-rate plays. She - the most gorgeous woman of her time. At the first glance, their relationship seemed quite unusual. It is known that it took Marilyn a year to win Miller over  - a tall, unarguably handsome and charismatic man, always with a pipe or a cigar in his mouth. The writer never stood out for being an eccentric in clothing: he preferred wearing classic suits, usually of white or black colours.

Miller saw Monroe as a serious dramatic actress, rather than another blond bimbo, as most people did. Magazine covers, Hollywood smiles on the photographs and a generally vanilla image of the couple was an antipode of their real relationship. Marilyn was difficult to handle - a sweetheart in the morning, by evening she used to turn into a demonic creature gulping down tons of sleeping pills. 

"Thanks" to Marilyn, for quite some time Miller lost his inspiration and ability to write - the owner of the myriad of awards, including the Pulitzer Prize (for Death of a Salesman), the author of most popular plays couldn't produce a single line. Nevertheless, Milled is considered to be one of the most productive writers of the 20th century. 

MARK TWAIN
1835-1910, Missouri-Connecticut

"What can be more depressing than the somber black which custom requires men to wear upon state occasions? A group of men in evening clothes looks like a flock of crows and is just about as inspiring." - Mark Twain

In 1906 Twain suddenly began wearing exclusively white. But it seemed so perfect an image for him, that now it is impossible to imagine Mark Twain wearing any other colour.
The famous writer gave hygiene as his reason for preferring white - which was either a way of stirring up the attention of the society, or senile extravaganza. Or both.

On formal occasions, Twain would wear a suit of white broadcloth, "as immaculate as newly fallen snow", white enameled leather shoes, the coat, lined throughout with white silk, white velvet collar, white trousers with a white silk braid down the outside seams, and a huge white mane of hair instead of a hat. During the day, he preferred a light flannel suit - also white, of course.

It was only four years before his death when Mark Twain publicly announced that he would henceforward wear white because it corresponded to the original costume of one of the characters invented by him, Adam (Extracts from Adam's Diary). Shortly after his seventieth birthday, he also declared that he was old enough to wear whatever he desired.

"There is absolutely no comfortable and delightful and pleasant costume but the human skin. That, however, is impossible. But when you are seventy-one years old you may at least be pardoned for dressing as you please." - Mark Twain

Dining With Oscar Wilde

Source: Pinterest

Oscar Wilde was not only a poet, playwright, and famous English wit. He was also a great expert on food and wine. He loved both, and if you read his plays carefully, you can find out that this love to delicacies runs through almost all of his works. From "reckless extravagance" of cucumber sandwiches in The Importance of Being Earnest to the claiming the "partaking of two luncheons in one day would not be liberty. It would be license."

Of course, many of these memorable quips and aphorisms were part of his fictional heroes. But many also attributed to his most famous character: himself.

"When I am in trouble, eating is the only thing that concoles me. Indeed, when I am really in great trouble... I refuse everything except food and drink."

Algernon Moncrieff,  The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 2 (1895) 

Wilde was appreciated worldwide for his polish phrases, fresh analogies and poetic ingenuity. He managed to express even the most mundane into smart and sharp insights that are quoted until this point.

"A man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world."

Lord Illingworth,  A Woman of No Importance, Act 3 (1893)

"After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations."

Lady Caroline, A Woman of No Importance, Act 2 (1893)

"Now I know that all men are monsters [...] The only thing to do is to feed the wretches well. A good cook does wonders."

Duchess of Berwick, Lady Windermere's Fan (1893) 

Wilde's favourite drink was iced champagne, as he confessed during the testimony on his libel trial. In fact, the famous dandy of literature was quite obsessed about champagne. Wilde would drink champagne "at intervals" throughout his "normal" day and also gave elaborate champagne dinners. As well as pre-dinners and post-dinners. But that was at his best times. On the worst days of his imprisonment, Wilde could still order cases of his favourite 1874 Perrier-Jouёt straight to his cell.

- Iced champagne is a favourite drink of mine - strongly against my doctor's orders.

- Never mind your doctor's oders, sir?

- I never do... 

(From the cross-examination by Queenberry's defence attorney, Edward Carson)

Additionally, Wilde's aesthetic standpoint on life demanded meals to be beautifully presented. In general, food played a strong role in many aspects if Wilde's life and his writing. Many Wilde's biographers say, though, that writer's appreciation for splendid dining - emphasized so much in De Profundis - clearly had a destructive effect on him. But at least one can say that, apart from living big, loving big, and writing big, Oscar Wilde ate big, too. 

"I can't stand people who do not take food seriously." - Oscar Wilde

Vintage Photos: Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov was not only a famous writer, but also a lepidopterist - a person who studies or collects butterflies and moths. Throughout his life, Nabokov collected around 4 000 specimens of butterflies, and drew millions and billions of beautiful pictures of the insects in the books he gave to his wife, Vera, and their son, Dmitry. That's how he expressed his sentimental emotions towards the people he deeply loved.

Author Vladimir Nabokov and his wife Vera chasing butterflies.

Wednesday Writers

In 1862 Victor Marie Hugo wanted to find out public's reaction on his recently published novel Les Miserables, so he sent a telegramme to his publisher, which consisted of solely a symbol - "?". Likewise, the publisher also responded with a symbol - "!". This was, probably, the shortest correspondence in history.

Title page of the original, written copy
of Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.
Source: Pinterest

Writers That Were Addicted to Coffee

The muse is always a serious subject for writers. It's hard to find one's writing momentum, but it's even harder to sustain it. So hip hip hooray to coffee - a thing that brings together all writers and helps them to 'stay tuned'. Caffeine is a drug with minimal drawbacks and powerful effects - it aids focus and attention, wards off sleepiness and tiredness, and speeds the refresh rate on new ideas. For many writers, coffee is a gateway to the creative mood. For example...

1. They say that Honore de Balzac used to drink enourmous amount of coffee - 50 cups a day - to maintain his crazy lifestyle. During the work periods, Balzac used to wake up at 1 a.m., write for seven hours, then take a 1,5 h nap at 8 a.m., then, from 9:30 until 4 he would work again - drinking cup after cup of black coffee. He wrote himself:

"As soon as coffee is in your stomach, there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move... smiles arise, the paper is covered. Coffee is your ally and writing ceases to be a struggle."

2. Søren Kierkegaard, famous Danish writer and philosopher, had his own coffee ritual. He poured sugar into a coffee cup until it was piled up above the rim. Next he would add an incredibly strong, black coffee to slowly dissolve the white pyramid of sugar. Then Kierkegaard would gulp everything down in one go. 

3. Voltaire, apparently, was just a bit less frenzy about coffee than Balzac - only 30 or 40 cups of coffee every day (mixed with chocolate, though).

4. Gertrude Stein was also a huge fan of coffee. According to herself, coffee "is a lot more than just a drink; it's something happening. Not as in hip, but like an event, a place to be, but not like a location, but like somewhere within yourself. It gives you time, but not actual hours or minutes, but a chance to be, like be yourself, and have a second cup."

5. Benjamin Franklin loved coffee for its little side effects. He said: "Among the numerous luxuries of the table... coffee may be considered as one of the most valuable. It excites cheerfulness without intoxication; and the pleasing flow of spirits which it occasions... is never followed by sadness, languor or debility."

6. Alexander Pope enjoyed his cup of coffee before writing, too. He explained that is made him "see through things with half-shut eyes."

7. Jean Jacques Rousseau sang dithyrambs to the smell of coffee, which he adored: "Ah, that is a perfume in which I delight; when they roast coffee near my house, I hasten to open the door to take in all the aroma."

8. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was also a coffee enthusiast.

9. Jonathan Swift admitted that coffee was his 'fuel' that enabled him to write. He said: "The best Maxim I know in this life is to drink your Coffee when you can and, when you cannot, to be easy without it. While you continue to be splenetic, count upon it I will always preach. Thus much I sympathize with you that I am not cheerful enough to write, for I believe Coffe once a week is necessary to that."

10. Dave Barry, a contemporary American author and columnist: "It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine medical need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently view it as some kind of recreational activity."

Coffee is a writer's best friend. Period.

And if you're merely a reader, you can still be good friends with coffee. Because, as famously declared Anthony Throllope, what can be more luxurious than a book and a cup of coffee? Nothing. Period.

Vintage Photos: Hemingway

A photo of little Hemingway fishing.

Hemingway was an inveterate fisherman, what one can guess from The Old Man and the Sea since his works are so autobiographical. 

Suicide Club: Writers Who Committed Suicide

Suicide is a word strongly associated with artistic people. It not just happened to be so - the long lists of suicidal writers, singers, painters, dancers and philosophers can hardly discredit this idea. I assume that in some cases, the inborn empathy, which is the source of artistic creativity, is as much of a gift as it is a curse...

Depression seems to be a connecting thread between many famous writers who decided to tear off its end by saying goodbye to life. Sometimes it was a simple way out of boredom, or severe illness, but sometimes it was a result of despair, of being driven into a corner, of feeling trapped, of having to step on the throat of one's own song... The motivation for some writers' suicide is still widely debated and maybe it will never be all cleared.

Until it is, here is the list of some of the greatest writers who commited suicide. There are, of course, many of those who did it, but in this list I tried to put the very creme de la creme. It is a funny feeling to see that even in death writers compete in creativity with each other.

Virginia Woolf, age 59: filled her pockets with stones and drowned herself in the river

It may sound horribly cynical, but it's difficult to imagine other end for Virginia Woolf. Early in her life, she suffered from sexual abuse which most likely was the cause of her mental instability. Numerous nervous breakdowns, several suicide attempts, her frigidity and absence of female and maternal happiness steadily built up toward the moment when she finally gave up on life on March 28, 1941.

Stefan Zweig, age 61:  suicide pact with his wife

Just few years before the suicide, Zweig was leading a full life: he was a world famous writer of standing reputation, a successful novelist and biographer, friends with Thomas Mann, James Joyce and Sigmund Freud,  happily married... But being Jewish made him feel all the trials and tribulations of the Hitler regime. In 1934 Zweig left Austria to England but then, due to swift advances of Hitler's troops, he and his wife crossed the Atlantic ending up in Latin America. Zweig was not simply afraid for his life - his biggest fear was that the world would eventually submit to Nazism, leaving no hope for the future of humanity. Having drowned in utter and complete desperation, he and his wife died together of drug overdose. They were found holding hands.

Marina Tsvetaeva, age 48: hanged herself

The young years of Tsvetaeva were cloudless. She came from a very respectable family, got excellent education, was fluent in Russian, Italian, French and German, published her first collection of poems at the age of 18, and got happily married to another poet, Sergei Efron. However, her perfect life turned topsy-turvy after the civil war: her husband was sent into exile and executed, one of her daughters starved to death, another one got arrested, and she herself was evacuated to Tatarstan where she hanged herself leaving a heartbreaking death note to her son:

"Forgive me, but to go on would be worse. I am gravely ill, this is not me anymore. I love you passionately. Do understand that I could not live anymore. Tell Papa and Alya, if you ever see them, that I loved them to the last moment and explain to them that I found myself in a trap."

Vladimir Mayakovsky, age 36: shot himself

One of the major representatives of Russian futurists, the enfant terrible, Mayakovsky was also a supporter of the Bolshevik revolution. On the contrary to this fact, Mayakovsky was not supporting the Reds and saw himself as a proletarian writer. The year 1930 was literally a big fail for Mayakovsky: his personal exhibition was ignored by all notable literators, his play 'The Bedbug' was very unsuccessful on stage, and rumour had it in the literary cirlces that Mayakovsky merely 'wrote himself out'. He was constantly surrounded by quarrels, scandals and gossips, and on April 14, 1930, unable to bear the pressure, he shot himself in the chest. Mayakovsky didn't die playing Russian roulette - this is another rumour. He left a note that started with probably the most famous suicide line ever written:

"Dont gossip [about my death]. The deceased hated gossip."

Ernest Hemingway, age 62: shot himself with his favourite gun

Underneath his masculine image, Hemingway was suffering from depressions throughout his whole life, and was generally inclined to suicide. In fact, his whole family had a long suicidal history: Ernest's father Clarence commited suicide, just like his own father had. Hemingway's brother Leicester, sister Ursula and, later, granddaughter Mariel succembed as well, so the very lovely idea of suicide ran in Hemingway's genes.

Sylvia Plath, age 30: poisoning herself with carbon dioxide

Plath continuously suffered from severe depression. She has been through electroconvulsive and insulin shock therapy but her suicidal ideation remained untouched, and so she further attempted to succumb various times. As the matter fact, in all of these attempts she tried to be as diverse and creative as only possible. She was a poet, after all. So she used to come up with all kind of stuff: slashing herself, overdosing with sleeping peels, running the car off the road, et cetera, until one day she sealed herself in the kitchen, put her head in the gas oven, and turned the gas on. She left behind two little children that were with her in the same house when she finally succeeded in killing herself.

Hunter S. Thompson, age 67: shot himself

It is hard to understand why would anybody commit suicide having already lived so long, but it seems like that was the very reason for Thompson's desicion: life bacem too long and too boring. His final words were:

"No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun - for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax - This won't hurt."

Jerzy Kosinski, age 57: asphyxiated himself with a plastic bag

Kosinski was an extremely successful Polish-American novelist, literary award winner, bestselling author, with his works translated into over 30 languages. However, at the end of his life, Kosinski's health was severely undermined, putting him through irregular heartbeat and physical and nervous exhaustion, also caused by accusation in plagiarism.  He ceased to live on May 3, 1991, when he overdosed himself with drugs and alcohol, and, just to be sure of successul outcomings, wrapped a plastic bag around his head and suffocated to death.

Anne Sexton, age 45: poisoned herself with carbon monoxide

Sexton was fighting a long battle against depression, suffering from mental illness and having suicidal tendencies throughout her whole life. She went through therapy, and her therapist Dr. Orne was, in fact, the one who encouraged Sexton to start writing poetry. Good adviser, bad therapist - Dr. Orne used hypnosis and anesthetics to recover her quasi repressed childhood memories, and struggled to diagnose whether she was suffering from bipolar disorder or histeria. But Sexton was definitely suffering from something: reportedly, she was physically violent with both of her children and her husband, and apparently even sexually assaulted her elder daughter Linda.
Sexton died on October 4, 1974. She put on a fur coat belonging to her mother, drank a glass of vodka, went to the garage and started the engine of her car, dying from carbon monoxide poisoning.
At that time, Sexton's poetry collection The Awful Rowing Toward God was about to be published, and she never wanted the world to see it before her death. So maybe she just couldn't wait until the book was published.

John Kennedy Toole, age 31:

Toole was an English teacher aspiring to become a writer. He submitted his first novel to a publishing house Simon & Schuster where it got rejected due to its 'essential pointlessness'. Unable to face the rejection, Toole ended his life by attaching a garden hose to the tailpipe of his car, running it into its window, and dying from the exhaust. For the next decade, his poor mother would obsess about getting his manuscript published. When she succeeded, her son was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1981. 

Top-40 Author-On-Author Insults

Every writer is, first and foremost, a reader.  And equally with us, ordinary bookworms, they have their literary preferences and favourite authors, too. For example, world famous Dostoevsky admired Tolstoi, and Pushkin worshipped Dante. However, what happens when one famous author doesn’t like the work of the other one? By all means, this antipathy should be declared, out loud, in a form highly sardonic and offensive.

It’s funny to read how 2 famous writers of, let’s say, 20^th century that are equally beloved now in the 21^st, are hurling juicy insults at each other, using quite a strong language and humiliating epithets.  It’s hard to comprehend, really, how anybody would want to dig out Shakespeare’s corpse and pelt it with stones. And how that person could be Bernard Shaw. 

I offer a list of 40 roughest author-on-author insults – juicy, hilarious to read and incredibly offensive.

40. Salman Rushdie on E. L. James

“I've never read anything so badly written that got published. It made 'Twilight' look like 'War and Peace.”

39. Ayn Rand on C.S. Lewis

“The lousy bastard who is a pickpocket of concepts, not a thief, which is too big a word for him…This monstrosity is not opposed to science — oh no! — not to pure science, only to applied science, only to anything that improves man’s life on earth!”

38. Noel Coward on Oscar Wilde

“[I] am reading more of Oscar Wilde. What a tiresome, affected sod.”

37. Gertrude Stein on Ezra Pound

“A village explainer. Excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not.”

36. Conrad Aiken on Ezra Pound

"For in point of style, or manner, or whatever, it is difficult to imagine anything much worse than the prose of Mr. Pound. It is ugliness and awkwardness incarnate. Did he always write so bardly?"

35. Charlotte Bronte on Jane Austen

"Why do you like Miss Austen so very much? I am puzzled on that point. What induced you to say that you would rather have written 'Pride and Prejudice'...than any othe Waverly novels? I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses."

34. Ralph Waldo Emerson on Jane Austen

“Miss Austen’s novels . . . seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in the wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. The one problem in the mind of the writer . . . is marriageableness.”

33. Samuel Butler on Goethe

"I have been reading a translation of Goethe's 'Wilhelm Meister'. Is it good? To me it seems perhaps the very worst book I ever read. No Englishman could have written such a book. I cannot remember a single good page or idea... Is it all a practical joke? If it really is Goethe's 'Wilhelm Meister' that I have been reading, I am glad I have never taken the trouble to learn German."

32. Wyndham Lewis on Gertrude Stein

“Gertrude Stein's prose-song is a cold black suet-pudding. We can represent it as a cold suet-roll of fabulously reptilian length. Cut it at any point, it is the same thing; the same heavy, sticky, opaque mass all through and all along.”

31. Samuel Johnson on Jonathan Swift

"Swift has a higher reputation than he deserves... I doubt whether 'The Tale of a Tub' to be his; for he never owned it, and it is much above his usual manner."

30. Samuel Pepys on William Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night's Dream)

"...we saw 'Midsummer Night's Dream', which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life."

29. Robert Louis Stevenson on Walt Whitman

“…like a large shaggy dog just unchained scouring the beaches of the world and baying at the moon.”

28. Friedrich Nietzsche on Dante Alighieri

“A hyena that wrote poetry on tombs.”

27. Vladimir Nabokov on Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Dostoevky’s lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity — all this is difficult to admire.”

26. Gustave Flaubert on George Sand

“A great cow full of ink.”

25. H. G. Wells on George Bernard Shaw

“An idiot child screaming in a hospital.”

24. Lord Byron on John Keats

“Here are Johnny Keats’ piss-a-bed poetry, and three novels by God knows whom… No more Keats, I entreat: flay him alive; if some of you don’t I must skin him myself: there is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the Mankin.”

23. Vladimir Nabokov on Joseph Conrad

“I cannot abide Conrad’s souvenir shop style and bottled ships and shell necklaces of romanticist cliches.”

22. Dylan Thomas on Rudyard Kipling

“Mr Kipling … stands for everything in this cankered world which I would wish were otherwise.”

21. Samuel Johnson on John Milton (Paradise Lost)

“'Paradise Lost' is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is.”

20. Martin Amis on Miguel Cervantes

“Reading Don Quixote can be compared to an indefinite visit from your most impossible senior relative, with all his pranks, dirty habits, unstoppable reminiscences, and terrible cronies. When the experience is over, and the old boy checks out at last (on page 846 — the prose wedged tight, with no breaks for dialogue), you will shed tears all right; not tears of relief or regret but tears of pride. You made it, despite all that ‘Don Quixote’ could do.”

19. William Faulkner on Ernest Hemingway

“He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”

18. Ernest Hemingway on William Faulkner

“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”

17. Gore Vidal on Truman Capote

“He’s a full-fledged housewife from Kansas with all the prejudices.”

16. Truman Capote on Jack Kerouac

“That’s not writing, that’s typing.”

15. Oscar Wilde on Alexander Pope

“There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.”

14. Vladimir Nabokov on Ernest Hemingway

“As to Hemingway, I read him for the first time in the early ‘forties, something about bells, balls and bulls, and loathed it.”

13. Henry James on Edgar Allan Poe

“An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.”

12. Elizabeth Bishop on J.D. Salinger

“I HATED [Catcher in the Rye]. It took me days to go through it, gingerly, a page at a time, and blushing with embarrassment for him every ridiculous sentence of the way. How can they let him do it?”

11. D.H. Lawrence on Herman Melville

“Nobody can be more clownish, more clumsy and sententiously in bad taste, than Herman Melville, even in a great book like ‘Moby Dick’….One wearies of the grand serieux. There’s something false about it. And that’s Melville. Oh dear, when the solemn ass brays! brays! brays!”

10. W. H. Auden on Robert Browning

“I don’t think Robert Browning was very good in bed. His wife probably didn’t care for him very much. He snored and had fantasies about twelve-year-old girls.”

9. Evelyn Waugh on Marcel Proust

“I am reading Proust for the first time. Very poor stuff. I think he was mentally defective.”

8. Mark Twain on Jane Austen

“I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”

7. William Faulkner on Mark Twain

“A hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven sure fire literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.”

6. D.H. Lawrence on James Joyce

“My God, what a clumsy olla putrida James Joyce is! Nothing but old fags and cabbage stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest stewed in the juice of deliberate, journalistic dirty-mindedness.”

5. Robert Louis Stevenson on Walt Whitman

“…like a large shaggy dog just unchained scouring the beaches of the world and baying at the moon.”

4. Henry James on Edgar Allan Poe

“An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.”

3. Anatole France on Emile Zola

“His work is evil, and he is one of those unhappy beings of whom one can say that it would be better had he never been born.”

2. Mary McCarthy on J.D.Salinger

"I don't like Salinger, not at all. That last thing isn't a novel anyway, whatever it is. I don't like it. Not at all. It suffers from this terrible sort of metropolitan sentimentality and it's so narcissistic. And to me, also, it seemes so false, so calculated. Combining the plain man with an absolutely megalomaniac egotism. I simply can't stand it."

1. Virginia Woolf on James Joyce

“[Ulysses is] the work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.”