God, are literary feuds lame lately — even, or especially, fake ones. Watch, for example, today's Daily News try to imply there's some beef afoot between Bret Easton Ellis and mentee Jeff Hobbs. What happened? Ellis didn't show up to the book party (at the Box, natch) for Hobbs's novel, The Tourists, about misbehaving Yale grads. The third paragraph casually mentions that Ellis lives in L.A., and the best evidence Rush and Molloy can dig up on the rift is that Ellis and Hobbs haven't seen talked in "three or four weeks." Say it ain't so! If they're determined to find a fight, we suggest they pick up on Ellis's quote in which he says Hobbs "has a lot of interesting things to say about that generation's fluidity about sexuality," and then plainly, just this side of legally, allege Ellis's own "fluidity" with Hobbs: Why else would he even be expected to fly cross-country to the Box in the first place? Then, suddenly, the news item's joke about "the well-endowed (um, with literary talent) Ellis" doesn't, um, dangle.

Odds of a Rift Between Ellis and Protege: Less Than Zero [NYDN]