Thus they are more apt to re-create incestuous and dysfunctional domestic connections with their fellow obsessive colleagues. Unlike Charles Manson's clan, they only killed in print. When actual family enters the picture, hostility is more passive-aggressive. Susan Cheever's memoirs revealed much about her dead father John's drinking and homosexuality. At least with two writers the fight isn't one-sided.
Love gone wrong gets even uglier.
Another form of literary friction is biting the hand that feeds you. Myrick Land's The Fine Art of Literary Mayhem chronicles how the young, poor H.G. Wells became a prot g of Henry James for 16 years, only to repay him by writing that James splits his infinitives and fills them up with adverbial stuffing. Ernest Hemingway could be the role model for all future backbiters. He betrayed everyone who helped him, including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ford Madox Ford. Politics also fuels many long literary hatreds.