Gore Vidal's bitter feuds

• JOHN UPDIKE

Gore Vidal was a frequent critic of the writings of John Updike, complaining that the author of the Rabbit series: “describes to no purpose”. Vidal also told the Parisian Review: "With me the problem is that Updike doesn’t write about anything that interests me. I am not concerned with middle-class suburban couples. On the other hand, I’m not concerned with adultery in the French provinces either. Yet Flaubert commands my attention. I don’t know why Updike doesn’t." He was more explicit in later life, saying: "I can't stand him. Nobody will think to ask because I'm supposedly jealous; but I out-sell him. I'm more popular than he is, and I don't take him very seriously . . .oh, he comes on like the worker's son, like a modern-day D.H. Lawrence, but he's just another boring little middle-class boy hustling his way to the top if he can do it."

• NORMAN MAILER

Norman Mailer once punched Gore Vidal at a party after a bad review. Still on the floor, Vidal declared: 'Once again, words fail Norman Mailer.' Their lengthy literary feud continued and Mailer also reportedly headbutted Vidal before an appearance on the Dick Cavett TV show after Vidal compared him to infamous killer Charles Manson. When Mailer once said that "Vidal lacks the wound" (a reference to his privileged upbringing), Vidal snapped:

"Privileged? You mean more privileged than a fat boy from South Africa." [Mailer's father was born in Cape Town].

Vidal later claimed he was not the main instigator of the antagonism, saying: "Mailer feuded with me. I knew Norman's syndrome. If I was on the cover of Time and he wasn't, my God he would be insulting me in the press. He couldn't stop. He lived for his little swig of PR."

• CRITICS

When Richard Adams, on That Was The Week That Was, called Vidal's work "meretricious", Vidal shot back: "Really? Well, meretricious to you and a happy new year." Vidal said of John Simon: “English is his third language and some of us were thinking about getting up a fund and sending him back to Berlitz for the remainder of the English language course.”

• WILLIAM F BUCKLEY, Jr

Vidal and the arch-conservative William F. Buckley clashed regularly. In a television debate from August 1968 (picture below), Vidal described Buckley as "Hitler without the charm." Buckley then compared anti-Vietnam war demonstrators to Nazis.

"As far as I'm concerned," Vidal told him, "the only pro- or crypto-Nazi I can think of is yourself."

"Now listen, you queer," Buckley replied. "Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in your goddamn face. I was in the infantry in the last war."

"You were not," Vidal replied.

"I was."

"You were not."

When asked later 'Where is your friend Mr Buckley?”, the writer feigned surprise before replying: “Oh, Buckley. He’s over at the Wallace headquarters stitching hoods”.

• ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Vidal, a master essay and historical novelists, did not contain his feuds to the living. He was a strong critic of the cult of Abraham Lincoln, writing once: "Nothing that Shakespeare ever invented was to equal Lincoln’s invention of himself". Vidal was frequently attacked by American historians for his portrait of the former President.