Beef, Bone, or Axe: Literary Grievances & Late Night TV

Got Beef? Got a bone to pick? Got an axe to grind? Metaphorical language has long been used to describe grievances. But what happens when the writers themselves are feuding? Television talk shows have served as intellectual battlegrounds, but few episodes captured the public imagination quite like the literary feuds that played out on The Dick Cavett Show. Before Colbert, Fallon, and Kimmel, host Dick Cavett was king of ABC’s late night from 1969-1975 before moving to PBS from 1977-1982. Remember that this time was the peak of American monoculture. There were not 17 different streaming apps, and Youtube, and social media, and cell phones. The happenings of late night television were the predominant talk around the water cooler at work the next morning. Although Dick Cavett was not as popular as fellow late night host Johnny Carson, with 3.4 million viewers to his 7.7 million, he was known for his unshakable demeanor and willingness to let guests engage in substantive debate, giving radicals and dissidents, in addition to writers, space to answer difficult questions. Uncensored and uninhibited, two feuds that played out in live time on his NYC set, in front of all of America, stand out as defining moments of both literary and television history.

Norman Mailer vs. Gore Vidal

The clash between Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal remains one of the most infamous moments in television history. By 1971, both writers had developed a long-standing rivalry rooted in their competing visions of American literature and masculinity. Vidal had recently published a scathing essay in The New York Review of Books attacking Mailer’s self-importance and his recent non-fiction book The Prisoner of Sex, which he wrote in response to Kate Millett's landmark 1970 work Sexual Politics on second-wave feminism. His review was quite harsh, as he likened Mailer to Charles Manson. When both appeared on The Dick Cavett Show in December 1971, tensions quickly escalated beyond polite literary criticism, as Mailer headbutted Vidal backstage. Onstage, Vidal launched a verbal assault on Mailer’s character and ego, provoking Mailer, who had been drinking (obviously), to respond with increasingly personal insults. The argument grew so heated that Mailer called Vidal a “sissy” and the f-slur, to which Vidal retorted that Mailer was a “big, loud, egotistical bully”. It is important to note that writer Janet Flanner was also present on the show, and interjected that she was bored of the two men fighting and acting as if they were the only people present. The confrontation reached its climax when Mailer slammed his glass on the table, stood up, and stormed off the set, leaving Cavett scrambling to restore order. Mailer later would claim that he received more mail about this incident than any piece of literature he had written. The feud did not end there, as in 1977 they ran into each other at a cocktail party and Mailer punched Vidal in the face. As Vidal fell, he famously retorted with, "Once again, words fail Norman Mailer”. Unsurprisingly, neither of these incidents convinced Mailer to become sober.

Mary McCarthy vs. Lillian Hellman

Nearly a decade later, another literary feud would unfold on Cavett’s show, this time with even more serious consequences. If you’ve been on our tour, you might remember that critic Mary McCarthy once said of Broadway playwright Lillian Hellman, “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’”. What you might not have realized is that she quipped that infamous line on The Dick Cavett Show. On January 25, 1980, novelist and critic Mary McCarthy appeared as a guest when Cavett asked her to name overrated writers. Her response triggered a legal battle that dominated literary news for years. McCarthy identified playwright Lillian Hellman as overrated and dishonest. This devastating critique, delivered casually on national television, struck at the heart of Hellman’s reputation as a serious writer and memoirist. The response was swift and severe. Hellman filed a $2.25 million libel suit later that month against McCarthy, Cavett, and the Educational Broadcasting Corporation (the PBS-affiliated producer of the show). The lawsuit dominated literary news for the next several years and continued until Hellman’s death in 1984, after which the case was effectively abandoned. Free speech activists believed McCarthy was in the right, as critics should be able to express their opinions without the fear of financial ruin. There was another political layer to this feud, as McCarthy was an anti-Stalinist and Hellman was a pro-Soviet who refused to name names in front of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. This act left her blacklisted by Hollywood.

The Dick Cavett Show provided a rare platform where intellectual debates could reach mass audiences, transforming what might have remained private literary disagreements into public spectacles. Over 50 years later, we are still reveling in personal conflicts during America’s largest televised events… “Alexa, play Not Like Us”. Although now most feuds appear to be calculated rage bait developed by PR teams, as media training has overtaken the industry, we still occasionally see this play out over social media, like in the cases of Stephen King and J.K. Rowling. Decades later, both feuds remain an important part of discussions about literary criticism, celebrity culture, and the role of television in shaping intellectual discourse. What is most striking is how little has changed in 2026, as celebrities are still arguing over masculinity in response to feminism, libel lawsuits altering public perception, and which political beliefs are considered “American”.

To learn more about famous literary feuds, come on our Greenwich Village Literary Pub Crawl and find out with whom Andy Warhol got into a cat fight with at a bar…