\n<\/p>\n
W<\/span>hether it is Henry Fielding mocking Samuel Richardson\u2019s painfully virtuous Pamela with his spoof, Shamela; Lillian Hellman suing Mary McCarthy for millions of dollars over her quip that \u201cevery word [Hellman] writes is a lie, including \u2018and\u2019 and \u2018the\u2019\u201d<\/a>; or Norman Mailer knocking Gore Vidal to the floor<\/a> at a party (\u201cOnce again words fail Norman Mailer,\u201d remarked Vidal), there is little more cheering than a good literary feud.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s been a while since a proper throwdown. Richard Ford famously shot an Alice Hoffman book and posted it to her after she wrote a bad review of his book (\u201cIt\u2019s not like I shot her,\u201d he told the Guardian in 2003<\/a>), and spat at The Underground Railway author Colson Whitehead over a similar offence, but Ford has lately refrained from such behaviour<\/a>. Tom Wolfe\u2019s death in 2018<\/a> put paid to his long-running and gloriously vituperative beef with John Updike, Norman Mailer and John Irving<\/a>. (Irving is now the only survivor from that contretemps: does that mean he wins?)<\/p>\n So all hail Cynthia Ozick who, taking inspiration from Derek Walcott\u2019s evisceration of his fellow Nobel laureate VS Naipaul<\/a> (\u201cI have been bitten, I must avoid infection \/ Or else I\u2019ll be as dead as Naipaul\u2019s fiction\u201d), has responded to a less-than-glowing review by Lionel Shriver with a poem.<\/p>\n In her review<\/a> of Ozick\u2019s Antiquities, Shriver asks why the author \u201cdecided to write this of all books \u2013 about an elderly man in a former boarding school reminiscing about a 12-year-old boy whose primary exoticism was being Jewish\u201d. While admitting that \u201cat 93, Ozick can still craft a beautiful sentence\u201d, Shriver ends: \u201cI hope I haven\u2019t sounded unkind. But Cynthia Ozick is a pro. Whatever her age, she can take it.\u201d<\/p>\n Returning fire, the great Ozick shows just how well she can take it, rhyming Shriver with \u201cno deep diver\u201d, before taking issue with the review, which described her novel as \u201codd\u201d and frequently mentioned her age.<\/p>\n \u201cOh look, the writer\u2019s so old! \/ (Reviewer? A mere sixty-four),\u201d writes Ozick<\/a>, which has \u2013 like Shriver\u2019s review \u2013 been published in the New York Times. \u201cIn the quiet of her nook \/ the writer is shook \/ and roars in her wrath \/ Anathema!\u201d Ozick thunders. \u201cFor the blow Shriver\u2019s given \/ May she never be shriven!\u201d<\/p>\n Rousing stuff. How will Shriver, no stranger to controversy<\/a>, respond? A duel with pistols, perhaps, a la Proust, who challenged Jean Lorrain over a review that suggested the author was gay? (He was and so was Lorrain.) Or with the forbearance shown by Salman Rushdie when he was dissed by the late Maurice Sendak? \u201cThat flaccid fuckhead,\u201d said Sendak.<\/a> \u201cHe was detestable. I called up the Ayatollah, nobody knows that.\u201d Rushdie, not one to shy away from a punch-up<\/a>, responded on Twitter<\/a>: \u201c#MauriceSendak<\/a> says I\u2019m a flaccid fuckhead. I love you too, Maurice. (Actually, I do. Grumpy old bastard.)\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n