Trolls Existed Before The Internet

“English has one million words; why confine yourself to six?” This vicious comment was directed by Virginia Woolf at D.H. Lawrence but could stand up to any trollish comment I read on the internet so far. But I hope you appreciate the style in crabbiness. With a book presenting a collection of crabby, cutting, stylish, and well directed insults directed by writers at fellow writers, even Trolls could attain literacy by applying the rules of the well honed insult.

Gary Dexter signs as editor to Poisoned Pens: Literary Invective from Amis to Zola published by Frances Lincoln Limited. It covers just about anything from ancient classical authors to modern time cat fights and is organised in chapters which don’t necessarily need to be read in the presented order. If you have a preference for venomous Victorians, feel free to start there. It also illuminates the reasons just why contemporary writers loath each other’s writing.

But to the aspiring troll, it gives invaluable examples like Oscar Wilde about Meredith: “As a writer he has mastered everything except language: as a novelist he can do everything except tell a story: as an artist he is everything except articulate.” That is what I call a well honed insult. Or Thackery on Swift: “Some of this audience mayn’t have read the last part of Gulliver, and to such I would recall the advice of the venerable Mr. Punch to persons about to marry, and day. Don’t.“

Take Jane Austen, one of the most revered and enduring English authors. Mark Twain, the American writer, was so irritated by Austen that he wrote in one letter: “Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin bone.” You might attribute this to cultural differences, but I for my part am able to enter into his feelings, I would like to do the same.

Maybe you prefer to stay with the more refined poets. Byron described Keats’s work as “neither poetry nor anything else but a Bedlam vision produced by raw pork and opium” and offered his publisher to skin him alive. Shelley on the other hand described Byron’s work as “mischievous insanity” brought on by Byron’s taste for “bigoted and disgusting Italian women”.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book from cover to cover, and it reminded me of my own time at boarding school, when I described the Roman writer Curtius Rufus thus: “His writing has the depth, the scope, the view, and the style of the Sun or the Star.” The writer was subsequently struck off the curriculum of first our boarding school and later all schools.

I recommend this book especially to all new Triond writers to deal with their trolls. If a comment is not as well written as the one by Oscar Wilde, ignore it, if it is, take it as a compliment.

Related articles

Truly Trollish: Eat Your Heart Out