In 2000, Wolfe was criticised by Norman Mailer, John Updike and John Irving, after they were asked if they believed that his books were deserving of their critical acclaim. Mailer compared reading a Wolfe novel to having sex with a 300 lb woman, saying 'Once she gets to the top it's all over. Fall in love or be asphyxiated.' Updike was more literary in his reservedness: he claimed that one of his books 'amounts to entertainment, not literature, even literature in a modest aspirant form.' Irving was perhaps the most dismissive, saying 'It's like reading a bad newspaper or a bad piece in a magazine ... read sentences and watch yourself gag.' Wolfe responded, saying, 'It's a tantrum. It's a wonderful tantrum. "A Man in Full" panicked Irving the same way it panicked Updike and Norman. Frightened them. Panicked them.' He later called Updike and Mailer 'two old piles of bones' and said again that Irving was frightened by the quality of his work. Later that year he published an essay titled "My Three Stooges" about the critics.