Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa
Affinity: García Márquez and Vargas Llosa connect over their “common denominator” William Faulkner and their shared sense of being outsiders in Europe.
Shelf life: Nine years (1967–76)
Fallout: Vargas Llosa famously punches Gárcia Márquez in the face at a cinema. Despite speculation that the disagreement was over politics—Vargas Llosa had developed anti-Castro sentiments, while Gárcia Márquez had remained a staunch leftist—mutual friends claim that Vargas Llosa said the punch was “for what you tried to do to my wife.”
Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell
Affinity: Brontë, already an established author, sends Gaskell her novel Shirley in 1849. Gaskell finds Brontë “very little and very plain” upon their first in-person meeting but notes that “she is truth itself—and of a very noble, sterling nature.”
Shelf life: Six years (1849–55)
Fallout: Gaskell becomes obsessed with writing Brontë’s biography despite her friend’s lack of enthusiasm for the project. She seems “determined that I shall be a sort of invalid,” Brontë complains to her publisher. “Why may I not be well like other people?”
Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini
Affinity: Conan Doyle and Houdini bond over a common interest in spiritualism and séances. Desperate to contact his son who had died during the First World War, Doyle comes to believe Houdini has supernatural powers.
Shelf life: Four years (1920–24)
Fallout: In a public letter, Houdini declares that he has never once in twenty-five years of investigation seen compelling evidence that it is possible to communicate with spirits. “I felt rather sore about it,” Conan Doyle privately responds to Houdini.
Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat
Affinity: The artists meet in 1982 and begin painting together the following year. Outside the studio their relationship involves attending art shows, working out, getting manicures together, and the occasional physical altercation.
Shelf life: Three years (1982–85)
Fallout: Critics pan the pair’s debut collaborative show. “The collaboration looks like one of Warhol’s manipulations,” writes the New York Times, while Basquiat “comes across as the all too willing accessory.” Basquiat never paints with Warhol again. Two years later Warhol’s unexpected death sends Basquiat into a depression.
Harper Lee and Truman Capote
Affinity: Lee and Capote grow up together in Monroeville, Alabama, writing stories jointly on a typewriter Lee’s father gives them. Lee protects Capote from bullies and later serves as a research assistant for his 1965 book In Cold Blood.
Shelf life: Thirty-five years (c. 1930–1965)
Fallout: Reportedly insulted that Capote mentions her only in the dedication to In Cold Blood, Lee claims he is jealous of the commercial popularity of her novel To Kill a Mockingbird. “His compulsive lying was like this,” she later explains. “If you said, ‘Did you know JFK was shot?’ he’d easily answer, ‘Yes, I was driving the car he was riding in.’ ”
