For a long time, authors have mostly resisted the urge to respond to negative coverage. But in the past month, at least two authors have decided to bite back. First Alice Hoffman fired off 27 tweets attacking Boston Globe critic Roberta Silman, at one point even publishing the critic’s phone number and e-mail address (Hoffman has since deleted her Twitter account). Then, Alain de Botton (pictured) posted the following comment on the website of critic Caleb Crain, who had reviewed de Botton’s The Pleasures of Work for The New York Times: “I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make.” Whoa! No one has written anything quite that vitriolic to Time Out, but we too have started receiving mail from authors. Alexander Waugh recently wrote to tell reviewer Jonathan Taylor: “To say that my treatment is ‘moist with contempt’…suggests to me that you haven’t actually read it.” He saved his strangest letter, however, for The New York Review of Books…