I wrote elegant prose and somehow ended up in a years-long beef with two men who looked personally attacked by punctuation. by Ivan Turgenev

You did not write elegance, Ivan; you wrote a velvet curtain and called it a soul.

Both of you treat a novel like a duel and then act surprised by the blood pressure.

Says the man who turned every sentence into a moral emergency.

At least my characters arrive on purpose.

At least mine can farm without a footnote.

Say what you want, Ivan, but your greatest talent was making everyone else sound exhausting.

And you wrote from a distance like the countryside was a rumor.