NEW YORK, NY — As the Donald Trump criminal trial continued to make headlines for both its political implications and the artistic renderings of the people involved, adult film star Stormy Daniels offered hush money to the courtroom sketch artist to get him to stop drawing her.
MALMO — People around the world sounded a celebratory cry this week, as having completed her quest to solve climate change, Greta Thunberg turned her attention to achieving peace in the Middle East.
Question for Quote Investigator: The best-selling author of pulp thrillers was excoriated by literary critics. His reported response was harsh:
The literary world is made of second-rate writers writing about other second-rate writers.
This statement has been credited to Mickey Spillane, but I am skeptical because I have never seen a citation. Is this quotation genuine? Would you please help me to find a citation?
Reply from Quote Investigator: U.S. crime novelist Mickey Spillane created the detective character Mike Hammer. Spillane wrote “I, the Jury” (1947), “My Gun Is Quick” (1950), “Kiss Me Deadly” (1952), and other bestsellers. In 1963 “Esquire” magazine published an interview with Spillane conducted by Terry Southern who mentioned that he was preparing a magazine issue covering the U.S. literary scene. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
After a terrific guffaw, and a slow, rather deliberate and somehow menacing cracking of knuckles, the Mick said, “Yeah, I’ve seen those articles—they never mention me; all they talk about are the Losers.”
“The Losers?”
“The guys who didn’t make it—the guys nobody ever heard of.”
“Why would they talk about them?”
“Because they can be condescending about the Losers. You know, they can afford to say something nice about them. You see, these articles are usually written by Losers—frustrated writers. And these writers resent success. So naturally they never have anything good to say about the Winners.”
Spillane’s answers above did not precisely match the quotation under examination; however, his remarks did exhibit a conceptual match. The term “losers” corresponded to “second-rate writers”. See the 1993 citation further below to learn more about the true creator of the quotation.
The 1963 interview contained other sharp replies from Spillane:2
“How do you feel about literary criticism of your books?”
“The public is the only critic. And the only literature is what the public reads. The first printing of my last book was more than two million copies—that’s the kind of opinion that interests me.”
When Spillane was asked about a fellow writer he was unsparing:
“Thomas Wolfe was a lousy writer,” he said. “He didn’t know what he was doing.”
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
In 1993 journalist and historian David Halberstam published a book about the U.S. in the 1950s titled “The Fifties”. Halberstam wrote the following about Spillane:3
Certainly, the critics hated him. James Sandoe of the Herald Tribune called him “an inept vulgarian.” . . . Such critical salvos did not burden Spillane, who liked to say that he did not care about the critics and that the only critics who mattered were his readers.
He thought the literary world was made up of second-rate writers who wrote about other second-rate writers. It was a world of the Losers. “The Losers?” Terry Southern asked him. “The guys who didn’t make it,” he answered, “the guys nobody ever heard of.”
The passage above included a version of the quotation. However, the statement was not placed between quotations marks. Instead, the statement was Halberstam’s perception of the viewpoint help by Spillane. Thus, Halberstam was the author of the quotation.
In 2019 the website “AceReader Blogger” published an article about Spillane containing the quotation:4
Malcolm Crowley of The New Republic called him “a dangerous paranoid, sadist, and masochist,” and even his own editors sometimes couldn’t stomach his content. Spillane was unmoved by his detractors, saying “You can sell a lot more peanuts than caviar,” and “The literary world is made of second rate writers writing about other second rate writers.”
In May 2024 the Wikipedia article for Mickey Spillane included the quotation:5
Spillane for his part was unmoved by critics, saying “You can sell a lot more peanuts than caviar” and “The literary world is made of second rate writers writing about other second rate writers.”
In conclusion, the quotation was not crafted by Mickey Spillane; instead, the quotation was constructed by David Halberstam in 1993. Halberstam was attempting to condense the viewpoint expressed by Spillane in the “Esquire” interview. The phrasing was Halberstam’s.
Image Notes: Illustration of a typewriter from the 1919 public domain book “The New Knowledge Library: Science, Invention, Discovery, Progress” published by The S. A. Mullikin Company.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to the anonymous person who saw the quotation in the Mickey Spillane Wikipedia article and asked QI to explore this topic.
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The public voices opposing the campus mayhem are writing only about freedom of speech. They point out that freedom of speech doesn’t include the freedom to occupy a campus or use violence.
That’s better than nothing, but it misses two points: on any private property, the free speech right is that of the owner, and any speaker on his property speaks by permission, not by right.
If there’s a pre-existing contract between the owner and the speaker, a contract governing this, then that rules. But I can’t believe there’s any contract between any private university and the students that gives them the right to do what they are doing.
Columbia and MIT are private universities, and they can eject any of these rabble-rousers at any time. (Note they are not “protestors” or “demonstrators,” they are agitators or hooligans or some such value-laden term.)
A government school is a different case, but even with government property, as Ayn Rand has pointed out, taxpayers are stand-ins for the owners, and the actions of the agitators are contrary to the very purpose of an institution of higher education.
But free speech is not the only issue, and not the main one. The issue is this: To side with Hamas against Israel is immoral. To side with the sub-humans who committed the atrocities of October 7 is obscenely evil. And Hamas is the elected government of Palestine.
Have any of the editorials and opinion pieces opposing the campus “protestors” made this point? I have seen defenses of Israel against Hamas, but none that denounce the position of the campus goons as an evil not to be sanctioned or debated. You don’t debate whether or not one should side with those who gleefully roasted babies in ovens.
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