Letters to the Editor
Tintin
Published Letters: 3 Editor's Choice: 2
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Always comforting
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thanks for a great read, Patrick. I have to fly regularly, but I am borderline phobic, so some of these flights can be real psychological ordeals for me. I know all about how safe air travel is statistically, but when I'm 35,000 above ground, little of that logic helps assuage my fear. Your column is the only thing that really seems to help me; when flying, I often conjure up various scenarios and explanations from your past columns. It comforts me--even when I remember descriptions of the harrowing stuff, as in today's column. If nothing else, you've probably saved me thousands of dollars in therapy working through all of this. Best wishes on your "re-entry," and I'm hoping that you'll be at the controls of one of my own flights.
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the "facts"
[Read the article: Phallus doesn't live here anymore]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Also wearisome are Roth's recent rebukes of readers who associate his characters with real-life counterparts, including Roth, himself."
This is right on the mark, but the rebukes are not recent. Go back to _The Anatomy Lesson_ (1983) and read Zuckerman's tirades against critic and scholar Milton Appel, who claims that Zuckerman is closer to Carnovsky than he would care to admit. Zuckerman himself seems to realize this, which galls him, and which is why he becomes obsessed with responding to Appel, finally doing so in a pitifully childish tirade by telephone. Roth is aware of his own disingenuous stance, I believe, and his constant denials are more fodder for his writing. All this is indeed wearisome. Roth has shown us what a master he can be when he looks outwards a bit (_American Pastoral_, _The Human Stain_). I'm looking forward to life without Zuckerman as main character.
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Francophobia
[Read the article: The man who ruined the novel]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This article is really just an excuse to bash the French. Why the offensive (and unoriginal) epithet "cheese-eating surrender monkeys?" This kind of thing is the refuge of scoundrels who are too lazy to debate an issue in an intelligent manner. When a reasoned argument fails, just remind the French that they capitulated in WWII. Works every time.