John Updike considers it one of the less elevated impulses, Norman Mailer sees it as an inevitable conflict, Wallace Stevens saw it as one of the greatest aspects of literature. There is a special frisson when great writers meet, and when one - or both - of them records the event, the result is rarely straightforward.This collection includes Jonson on Shakespeare; Hazlitt on Coleridge; Philip Roth dashing the hopes of a dying Bernard Malamud; Virginia Woolf glimpsing D. H. Lawrence on an Italian railway platform from a passing train; and Martin Amis interviewing Nicholson Baker, a writer who is both taller and younger than he is. As W. H. Auden observed, writers have no small talk when they meet; as evidence here, this frequently leads to fireworks. An anthology of rivalry, jealousy, hatred, bitterness and revenge, dotted with occasional moments of admiration, magnanimity and affection.
- ISBN13 9780571146499
- Publish Date 20 September 1999
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 20 September 2010
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Faber & Faber
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 240
- Language English
- URL https://allenandunwin.com/browse/books/9780571146499