auteur
Explanation
This comic is titled with the premise "I collect times canonical authors have talked shit about each other," and then presents a series of panels showing famous literary figures making cutting remarks about one another.
The first pair shows a quote attributed to an exchange involving Emerson and another writer. One says "He said, 'Oh, don't talk about Emerson, he is the only girl I'd flirt with.'" Then someone asks about Emerson, and the response is "Fou." ("Fou" is French for "crazy/mad.")
The next pair references Twain on Jane Austen, with a quote capturing Twain's famous disdain: he found her prose to be unreadable despite acknowledging her literary importance. There is also a Wodehouse on Milne panel, where P.G. Wodehouse expresses his personal animosity toward A.A. Milne (the Winnie-the-Pooh author), saying he found Milne's work to be more saccharine than sincere.
Then Borges on Tolkien is referenced, with a quote suggesting Borges found Tolkien's work to be tedious. Borges is quoted as saying something to the effect of "I wish somebody would explain it to me" or expressing general bafflement at the popularity of Tolkien's fiction, showing a lack of respect for Tolkien.
The final pair shows Robert Louis Stevenson making a cutting remark about another author's work, saying something about the futility of writing a certain type of book because nobody bothers to read it.
The punchline comes in the last panel, where someone applies this formula of literary trash-talk to a mundane situation: "The Herostratus of tacos, if she escapes oblivion --" and is cut off with "Stop! I'm not sharing my lunch with you!" The joke is that the person has internalized the ornate, classically-referential style of literary insults (comparing someone to Herostratus, the ancient Greek who burned down the Temple of Artemis for fame) and is now using it for something completely trivial -- trying to guilt someone into sharing their tacos. The humor lies in the mismatch between the elevated rhetorical register and the petty objective.
The comic also works as a celebration of the fact that even the most revered literary figures were catty, petty, and competitive with each other, which humanizes them and provides some comfort to anyone who has ever felt inadequate compared to the great authors.