You've got to remember..back in the day..when reading and writing and authors were of national importance..if you called WH Auden or VS Pritchett or Beckett or Dickens boring...publically..you risked having someone throw a punch at you!
Yes. Many readings and literary events ended with writers and fans coming to blows over opinions.
For example--Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer hated each other's guts and at a party in New York City, Mailer confronted Vidal over a review he wrote about a book...Vidal said something sarcastic, Mailer threwdown a haymaker on Vidal and Vidal responded with the classic line: "Words fail Norman Mailer again!"..
Ah, good times...Sometimes a couple of people getting into a good old fashioned scrap over a writer...good spectacle...
For clarification..it appears Sputnikgirl has very scandalous taste in books..Nabokov, Marquis de Sade both wrote scandalous sexually graphic novels. Anais Nin...hmmm..did she write fem/lez lit?