... The fight hasn't gone out of literature just yet | Books | The Observer. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer, respectively "exquisite" and homophobic postwar writers competing for audiences and approval, took their enmity into dinner parties, book launches and, on one memorable occasion, a TV studio, where Mailer butted Vidal in the green room. Way to go! Later, floored by another blow from Mailer, Vidal bounced back with "as usual, words fail him". Now that Mailer is dead, Vidal can take satisfaction from being the last man standing (just).
Re the Dickens vs. Thackery feud: as a writer, I always found it touching that this bad blood between two highly sensitive artists was ended when after many years one of them simply approached the other with kind words and a handshake.
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I was disappointed to read in the reviews of Bruce Jay Friedman's memoirs that Friedman merely beat Mailer in a fistfight. I had read somewhere before that Friedman threw him over a car, which sounded better.
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