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First Legs McNeil came out swinging at Martin Amis, and now Kurt Andersen is puffing his chest up at James Wolcott. The usually timid literary/journalism scene is starting to resemble the hip hop world with all these feuds. We haven't seen this much beef in lit land since Norman Mailer stopped advertising for himself. (And, no, that's not a shot at Mailer's weight: we don't want a feud of our own.)

Here's what Andersen had to say about James Wolcott (who dissed him, as the kids say, on his blog this week) in a letter to Jim Romenesko's site:

It's sad that instead of engaging the substance of what I wrote in New York about the shifting ethics of one's position on the war in Iraq, and
partisanship's corrosion of intellectual honesty, he resorts almost entirely to ad hominem attack and accusations of bad faith. (Also, speaking of honesty, why does Wolcott now suggest that he liked Spy, since at the time, as I recall, he only ridiculed the magazine in print? Might this be some "positioning on his part — that is, because *back then* Spy was satirizing his Vanity Fair boss, whereas his *current* Vanity Fair boss was a co-founder of Spy? But I digress.)

Ouch. Strangely, Andersen didn't have what to say about Matt Taibbi's NYPress column, which started this whole kerfuffle in the first place. Also strange: why didn't Andersen just have it out with Wolcott on his blog? That's how it's done these days, right?

We'll keep you posted when Wolcott responds. We're also getting Charlie Rose on the line as a possible mediator in case this thing gets any uglier.

Andersen misses the "fresh, smart" Wolcott of old [Poynter]
Take This Binary Mode and Shove It [JamesWolcott]
Breaking: Matt Taibbi Quits Kurt Andersen Fan Club!

[Andersen cartoon via Slate; Wolcott cartoon via JamesWolcott]