Return Fire (Excoriation Blues Part 2)

Further to my rant about hatchet jobs, I came across a few examples of return fire from aggrieved authors while reading The Independent and figured I had to pilfer them for your entertainment.

Check these out for some pucker-up, cats-arse sour grapes:

Noam Chomsky responding to John Gray's poor review of his latest book: "The stunning irrationality of [Gray's] inferences renders comment superfluous".

Alain de Botton on Caleb Crain's review of The Pleasures And Sorrows Of Work in The New York Times: "I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make."

Martin Amis slagging off Tibor Fischer over the latter's review of his unquestionably appalling piece of shit, Yellow Dog: "Tibor Fischer is a creep and a wretch. Oh yeah: and a fat-arse."

Niall Ferguson on Pankaj Mishra's review of his book Civilization: "If he won't apologise for calling me a racist, I will persecute him until he does... it seems to be becoming de rigueur for mediocrities to build their fame on attacking those more successful than them."

Amongst her 27 angry tweets following a bad review in The Boston Globe, was this hilarious stab from Alice Hoffman:"Roberta Silman in the Boston Globe is a moron. How do some people get to review books?... Now any idiot can be a critic."

Ayelet Waldman lets out a primal scream in 140 or less characters, following bad reviews for her husband's book The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man: "To the fucking MORON Amazon reviewers giving Awesome Man 1 star [because] 'It would be good for, like, a 2 year old' IT WAS WRITTEN FOR LITTLE KIDS"

Nothing like seeing great authors turn all 13-year-old kid in a playground! I'll just sit back now and wait for Mr. Perlman's response to Mr. Gates. Fire away!