Letters to the Editor
XOXO
Published Letters: 33 Editor's Choice: 3
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I wish
[Read the article: The best-laid plans]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I could post anonymously. If I could post anonymously, I would have the courage to expose a faux-memoir scandal. Because my judgement is addled by flu-like symptoms and boredom, I am going to speak anyway. The person who confided in me knows me for an unstable blabbermouth, so I'll probably be fulfilling his expectations.
There is no "Sloan Crosley," daughter of privilege and pretty good diction. She is in almost every respect a fiction. Yes, the true author has eaten potatoes, and has walked barefoot, but beyond those details, and the common bonds of humanity, there is no similarity to note. The author of this excerpt, and the rest of the "Sloan Crosley" corpus, is Kwame Adesa, former child-soldier, former refugee, probable native of Burkino Faso. He was introduced to English through parsing the operation manual for a grenade launcher, at 12, under conditions where failure would entail a severe beating and loss of food privileges. His first choice of a second language was French, but the beetles had eaten that portion of the manual. Had the beetles continued, he would be writing to us in Korean. Or not at all. Demobilized at 17, he spent the next four years in camps, where he refined his English skills with the intermittent assistance of Red Cross workers and Peace Corp volunteers, one of whom had an uncle in publishing.
Asked (by me, in the anteroom of a Berlin diskotek) why he doesn't write about his personal experiences, Adesa replied, "I prefer worlds that are prettier than the world I knew. I love lexicons where the terms, "Safety" "Danger" and "Loss" enjoy nuanced associations. You know, Jane Austin? Collette? Yes, many readers find these situations where "Happiness" means retaining your limbs so... compelling. The drama of keeping the vital organs out of the beaks of vultures. The very very very bad things, about which there is no question. But what may be said at the end of such a tale? Only, "God did not choose to strike me with his hammer." Or, "God struck me, but I survived." I said those sentences years ago. Now I want to write. Would you like another beer? Or shall we dance?"
Fictively yours,
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Dear Andrew,
[Read the article: Interrogating Abu Ghraib]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That was a beautiful interview. That was art. The topic is so... "delicate," is not the right word, but it will have to do. Much more like capturing butterflies, alive, than shooting buffalo. It sounds very much like this is Morris's sensibility, and the way in which you conveyed how that sensibility worked on you, over the interview, was generous. I don't know that I will have an opportunity to see Morris's film, but if I can see it I will. Thanks for your delicate, humorous, and respectful treatment of this film and this topic. I've been getting a lot from your work generally, but this piece made it necessary to write you a fan-letter. You write a nuanced and precise prose, with an excellent sense for what is interesting, and, even more rare, for what is interesting about what is interesting. I am sooo jealous. Thanks.
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KC8905 "What kind of president?"
[Read the article: Dem candidates up with new ads in North Carolina]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yeah, I was also wondering about the significance of "...the breast president." We know from her poem and earlier remarks that breasts are far from being Maya Angelou's only criteria, but that phrase is delivered in the position of summation, or closer. Being a poet, she can't be intending a merely literal reading of "Breast." I think she must be invoking the broader, nurturing connotations of breast. I do like "breast president" more than, "most nurturing president." It strikes me as less... infantilizing? Condescending? Something like that. It does seem a little racy to me, but I think I'm a little stodgier than most, so that shouldn't be a problem. And there is humor in the construction -- the obvious, rhyming association with "best" is deft. Sigh. Just when I'm resolved to go with Nader, something like this happens, and I'm forced to re-assess the virtues of another candidate.
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wild-wife
[Read the article: I want more commitment from my married girlfriend]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hey, you've got company. Doesn't it seem like (practically) everyone is totally terrified? Any time someone invokes a high moral order, and then recommends that the person who violates it should die, I have to wonder what is going on. It seems so schizo. Why are people so eager for a stoning? Hester Prynne got off way to easy, evidently, merely ostracized with her letter "A." I imagine a lot of things, but mostly I can't help thinking that a lot of people feel incredibly fragile in their relationships/marriages. I'm not at all against monogamy, but the spouse-as-property assumption that seems to animate so many of these comments is, for me, just icky. That it seems to require so many people to propose so much cruelty, contributes to that repugnance. And you are so right -- few things in this world are as closed to casual observation, or easy understanding, as the intimacies between people, wherever those intimacies occur. In my sadder moments, I think maybe people are not experiencing much true intimacy, and that all they have to assure themselves that they are in a "real" relationship is a generic contract, signed in the presence of a petty official. But that is too sad, so it can't be true.
Anyway, thanks for writing. I was feeling lonely.