Available at Amazon.

Will explain many things.

May not solve everything at once, but will point the way.

Good luck.

(From a still blocked fiction writer who made a mid-career switch to become a performing songwriter...)

Is every female or minor who's ever been hurt, betrayed, or lied to by a husband/father his "victim"?

Do we ever hear the word "victim" applied to men who've been hurt, betrayed, or lied to by their wives?

Glenn has repeatedly pointed out that outsiders simply can't judge what harm may have been visited upon his family by Spitzer's actions. But I just want to add how deeply insulting and patronizing it is, as a married woman and mother, to keep hearing men--and it is always men, isn't it?--fulminate pseudo-protectively over other men's Poor Helpless Charges.

Let's let the Poor Widdle Women decide for themselves whether they'd use the word "victim" in relation to what goes on in their families, shall we?

Um, sorry to weigh in on this issue that ought to be completely tangential. But again, I am among those who are continually appalled by people's fixation on private sexual and family matters at the expense of real victims: of torture, of illegal wars, of cleverly seeded and manipulated inter-tribal chaos, of governmental privacy-invasion, must I go on?

UGH.

typo in the headline

Sometimes I think I'm the only one who's ambivalent about everything, but maybe that's just narcissistic of me!

Even bought it for my brother-in-law a few Christmases ago.

She really should stick to benign lit crit.

Oh, and by the way, how many more admitted conservative letter writers have to say, "Gee, Camille, I love your stuff, and I agree with most of it, and you seem so very intelligent, not at all like other stupid liberals" before people stop calling her a liberal?

Thanks for that description of "Thriller in Manila." Can't wait to see it.

I remember loving "When We Were Kings," which tells the story quite aggressively from Ali's POV, as elucidated/enhanced by Norman Mailer and George Plimpton.

But that film left out all those other, more complex, truly journalistic details you mention were left out of the earlier film--such as Frazier's humble origins and Ali's vicious trash-talk. I hate to think of "...Kings" as merely a hagiography (presided over by two besotted, Iron John-era literary masculinists who speak of Ali in nearly messianic tones), but it sure sounds as if the new movie is far more nuanced and realistic.

Brian has 3 children from his marriage, Louise has 1 son.

I'm with those readers who hear a definite personality disorder in this woman's self-reporting. She reminds me of my mother, who is 72 but profoundly immature, insecure, and fearful, and still acts like a teenager where men are concerned.

My heart goes out to all four of those children. Their parents are too busy being fucked-up and self-absorbed to notice the damage they're doing to the innocents around them.

going to step up and advocate for a return to 50 percent marginal tax rate on the highest earners, as one anti-cap CEO suggested in a NYTimes op-ed today?

....chirrup chirrup chirrup (the sound of crickets against a background of total silence)....

If it were truly a neutral reference, you would simply use a word like "man" or "person" or "asshole" or whatever to express your dislike of David Dinkins, or the President, or whomever.

It's only happened to me on one occasion, and I was lucky because my subject was a former teacher of mine who graciously submitted to a do-over. But I do live in fear of a re-occurrence. Good luck with the digital recovery process. I'm sure we'd all like to hear the breadth of Johnson's discussion but your summary of the main points is fascinating and...perhaps..scary enough.

Over at Slate, where a shortened version of this letter was also published, LW actually reveals the amount to be $30,000.

Go on that trip, LW. Travel cheaply in Asia, Africa, or South America, you can make it last a while. But save some portion of that. You will need it later on in life, when significant but not life-changing chunks of money are needed for a house downpayment, new car, more education, kid's college fund, whatever.

Of course he's 22. That's exactly the age when writers tap easily into this level of snark and get away with it. If he were much older, his hyperbole would make him sound immature.

And speaking of hyperbole...Brightstar, your unpublished status probably has less to do with the color of your skin than with the content of your character. E.g., unfunny, one-note screeds against all womankind are apparently not in high demand among editors today. Such a pity, huh.