Irving and Wolfe Joust in 'Salon'

Staff -- Library Journal, 1/10/2000

It seems Tom Wolfe can sell lots of copies of his books but has very few admirers in the literary world. Following his much-ballyhooed jihad with John Updike several months ago, Wolfe has now squared off in a defensive posture against John Irving, who blasted him on e-magazine Salon.com. According to Salon, while publicizing his new volume My Movie Business: A Memoir, Irving dubbed Wolfe a "bad writer," and described his books as "journalistic hyperbole described as fiction," to which he added that reading Wolfe is akin to "reading a bad newspaper or a bad piece in a magazine. It makes you wince." Wolfe later reacted telling Salon, "Why does [Irving] sputter and foam so? He needs to get up off his bottom and leave that farm in Vermont or wherever it is he stays and start living again."