Where have the he-men of English letters gone?

The pugnacious, bar-brawling heavyweight champion of letters came to be renowned for his macho posturing as much as his literary achievements: he stabbed one of his six wives with a knife, headbutted Gore Vidal in the face, promised to stage gladiator contests in Central Park when he became mayor of New York, and went dancing with Truman Capote at a nightclub called Corpse, which took its name from the cadaver displayed on a slab in the middle of the dance floor.

His fellow writer Wiliam Burroughs, who died this August, went one better and shot and killed his common-law wife in a drunken game of William Tell at a party. As a young man he severed the last joint of his left little finger to impress a friend.

But the undoubted king of heavy drinking braggadocio was Ernest Hemingway, who came to physical blows with the interviewer Max Eastman after the latter questioned whether he used machismo to conceal his impotence.

England pioneered the tradition of street-fighting writers: Ben Jonson was imprisoned for killing a man in a duel and Christopher Marlowe died in a drunken street brawl. But where are our men of action today?

Sebastian Faulks is the curly-haired putti of English letters, who wouldn't or couldn't hurt a fly. Ian McEwan may sell novels by the bucketload but he is as mild-mannered as a milkmaid and looks as though he hasn't seen the light of day for years. Poet laureate Andrew Motion wears bangles. Need I say more?

When Julian Barnes and Martin Amis fell out after Amis sacked Pat Kavanagh (aka Mrs Julian Barnes) as his literary agent, they didn't meet with pistols at dawn. Their enmity was expressed through a terse exchange of letters. Amis was regularly called the enfant terrible of English literature but he's no longer an enfant and he was arguably never that terrible.

These days literary types prove their ruggedness by taking drugs or using profanities (yawn). The closest thing we have to a cult of machismo is Simon Gray, he of The Smoking Diaries fame.

In all my years as a journalist, the only people who have threatened to punch my lights out are businessmen and ex-convicts. Well, if you must know it was Sir Philip Green and John McVicar. And they never acted on their word.

Our American literary cousins may be publicity-seeking egomaniacs but English writers by comparison are a bunch of lily-livered popinjays by comparison.

No wonder literary fiction is in such a parlous state. What we need is some beef and brawn. A gladiator contest in Hyde Park would be a good start. Any takers?