Literary frenemies

There are quite a few literary pairings where two authors were constantly competing with each other and trying to outdo the other.  Sometimes the competition was relatively good-natured and/or one author took the other as a mentor (which tended to smooth ruffled feathers, at least until one became more successful than the other).  I guess in general, I would find the Ezra Pound/T.S. Eliot relationship to be fairly balanced.  While I am not that aware of the particulars, John A. Williams, in The Man Who Cried I Am, asserts that James Baldwin was trying to kill off (metaphorically) and supplant Richard Wright, who was a kind of father figure to African-American writers, particularly those living in exile in Paris.

But far more frequently there is a lot of ill-natured competition between equals or near equals.  I'm honestly not aware if Dostoevsky and Tolstoy ever had it out (though readers today certainly take sides), but Dostoevsky definitely disliked Turgenev at least most of the time.*  I would still take Dostoevsky over Tolstoy (if forced) and probably over Turgenev, but it would be an extremely difficult choice.  In fact, after I reread Fathers and Sons and get through A Sportsman's Sketches, I may well re-evaluate and find that Turgenev is a bit slier and more cosmopolitan than Dostoevsky and my allegiances may shift.

Now there is no question that between Hemingway and Fitzgerald, I would choose Fitzgerald, though I suppose I would ultimately choose Faulkner over both.  Nonetheless, it is the fierce friendship and rivalry between Hemingway and Fitzgerald that really was a bit remarkable.  To be honest, I don't think I would have wanted to be friends with either of them, though I had a friend who was definitely more in the Hemingway line (and perhaps I am a bit snooty like Fitzgerald, though I think on the whole I am better to waiters and taxi drivers...).

As far as I can tell, Hemingway never did smack Fitzgerald in the nose, though he came close on a few occasions.  My last pair of frenemies were once close friends and yet Julio Vargas Llosa indeed did sucker punch Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 1976 and they never spoke again, though there were some rumours of a bit of thaw towards the end of Garcia Marquez's life.  While this feud was sometimes ascribed to a gradual misalignment in their political philosophies, it seems to have been far more personal than political (apparently after Garcia Marquez got too close to Vargas Llosa's wife).

In this case, I am more closely aligned with Garcia Marquez, not only because I read several of his key works at an earlier stage in my literary development (early 20s) but because he seems to generally write better female characters and to have slightly lower levels of machismo running through his works.  In some sense, this is still a matter of degree, as he dwells on prostitutes and soldiers (both major themes of Vargas Llosa) but just seems slightly more rounded.

There is no question that I have read more of Garcia Marquez: just about 65% of the major works.  While this will mostly be of interest to myself, I will go ahead and list them below and my progress through them:

R Leaf Storm (1955)
RR No One Writes to the Colonel (1961)
R In Evil Hour (1962)
R One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)
O The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor (1970)
R The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975)
R Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981)
R Collected Stories (1984)
R Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)
R The General in His Labyrinth (1989)
O Strange Pilgrims (1993)
O Of Love and Other Demons (1994)
News of a Kidnapping (1996)
O Memories of My Melancholy Whores (2004)

So I think there is a fairly good chance I will start working my way back through Garcia Marquez's works, starting in 2016 or so (maybe skipping The General in His Labyrinth as I read that so recently), and I'd only need to check two out of the library.  (It is an open question if We'll Meet Again in August will be published, but that might take away some of the sting of his last novel being somewhat unworthy, at least to my eyes.)

It's quite embarrassing when I do the same for Vargas Llosa because I simply cannot remember which I read or didn't read (many of these novels were read during my first year teaching in Newark where so much has become a blur).  I'm sure I've read 5 and perhaps as many as 8 of his novels (whereas I've definitely read 9 novels and novellas by Garcia Marquez).  I've gone ahead and listed the Spanish title and the English translation, though I've only read him in English:

R?  La ciudad y los perros - 1963 (The Time of the Hero, 1966)
R  La casa verde - 1966 (The Green House, 1968)
R  Conversación en la catedral - 1969 (Conversation in the Cathedral, 1975)
O Pantaleón y las visitadoras - 1973 (Captain Pantoja and the Special Service, 1978)
La orgía perpetua: Flaubert y "Madame Bovary" - 1975 (The Perpetual Orgy)
R?  La tía Julia y el escribidor - 1977 (Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, 1982)
R  La guerra del fin del mundo - 1981 (The War of the End of the World, 1984)
R? Historia de Mayta - 1984 (The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta, 1985)
R?  ¿Quién mató a Palomino Molero? - 1986 (Who Killed Palomino Molero?, 1987)
El hablador - 1987 (The Storyteller, 1989)
Elogio de la madrastra -1988 (In Praise of the Stepmother, 1990)
Lituma en los Andes - 1993 (Death in the Andes, 1996)
Cartas a un joven novelista - 1997 (Letters to a Young Novelist)
O  Los cuadernos de don Rigoberto - 1997 (Notebooks of Don Rigoberto, 1998)
La fiesta del chivo - 2000 (The Feast of the Goat, 2001)
El paraíso en la otra esquina - 2003 (The Way to Paradise, 2003)
R  Travesuras de la niña mala - 2006 (The Bad Girl, 2007)
El sueño del celta - 2010 (The Dream of the Celt, 2012)
El héroe discreto - 2013 (The Discrete Hero, 2015)

So this is a case where I probably ought to just go through the list (though skipping The Bad Girl, which I didn't like much at all).  Ideally, I would even alternate with Garcia Maquez, maybe trying to knock one off each list per month (maybe doubling up some of the shorter works).  So that sounds like a fairly reasonable plan.  I have to admit, I am not that interested in The Dream of the Celt, but what little I have heard of The Discrete Hero suggests it would be a worthy final novel (assuming he doesn't publish anything else in the meantime).

As far as I know Borges never got into any major literary spats, though I wouldn't be at all surprised if Pablo Neruda had several running feuds due to his (leftist) politics.  Carlos Fuentes and Octavio Paz ended up in a major feud essentially over whether Fuentes was Mexican enough.  That actually makes Fuentes a bit more interesting in my eyes.  I never have managed to tackle Terra Nostra (one day!), but I've read and enjoyed most of his other works, particularly Christopher Unborn, which I keep name checking.  Well, some day I'll try to get through his major novels as well, though it is hard to see where I will find the time.  Maybe I can find that elusive balance between work and life, or be like Mister X and do away with sleep altogether.

* While I was hoping to find more about the dust-up between Garcia Marquez and Vargas Llosa, this piece gives some brief highlights of other famous literary spats and reveals that Tolstoy once challenged Turgenev to a duel.  Those Russians really took their differences, political and literary, quite seriously!