from a terser NYT review today:

"....boorish, bigoted and borderline pornographic. As Chev charges around town searching for his stolen organ — juicing himself with jumper cables, a Taser and a bout of old-lady frottage — the plot vigorously abuses Mexicans, Asians, women and the disabled with equal-opportunity glee."

I have more and more fellow authors asking me, "Do you read books the same way any more?" The answer is uniformly "no." One told me she was in the middle of a history and wandered off to Google various events and was lost for an hour and a half, drawn from link to link. Myself, I find that the book has to be of a very high standard for me not to get distracted now: great voice, terrific story, beautiful writing. The genre doesn't matter, the quality does. Years ago even an indifferent book could keep my interest for long stretches, sometimes just because I was hoping it would improve.

If her mother was troubled by her father's infidelity, it seems that Elizabeth Edwards was unconsciously recasting that family scene and trying to rewrite it. She, too, would marry a man likely to stray, but it wouldn't happen on her watch. She could thereby redeem her mother's pain, and her own watching what happened to her mother. Instead, she's actually lived something far worse: a national scandal. It's very, very sad to see her a prisoner of her parental past.

If you read the seminal work of Silvan Tomkins and Gershen Kaufman on shame, you'll see that some people respond to intense humiliation by plunging even further into shame as an attempt at purging the profound shame they're experiencing. It's a "bath of shame."

Edwards took that route by writing the book, and then going on a book tour and submitting herself to interviews like the one on Oprah. She might also have conceived of the money from the book and the attention of reviews and interviewers as a balm.

Other spouses choose to work through their shame in private with a therapist, and deal with their rage at the spouse in couples therapy.

Imagine seeing the show in a decade of war, riots, government malfeasance, raging contempt for protest and everything else we grew up with in the 60s. It was uplifting and exciting in equal measures. I still recall watching it transfixed in a darkened room, and I'm hesitant to revisit the original show. I'd rather not see any flaws. But then I don't have to go back to those episodes. Having seen the new movie twice in one week, I think it recaptures and reinterprets the show's spirit at whole new levels of magnitude. I'd rather see that again. And again.

It's all about a power. Even as commendable a leader as Obama is reluctant to give up the array of powers Bush and Cheney arrogated to themselves. But it's academic anyway, because we continue to see the decline of the military empire that we have become. No President can stop it, because no President will dismantle the militarization of the U.S. that has already lead us into two insane unwinnable wars, economic meltdown and whatever other disasters are around the corner.

I've always wondered if the Illuminati were being feverishly battled even as we speak by a super-secret group called the Welluminati.

The reply made me think of Hemingway's line, "Isn't it pretty to think so?" It's lovely to talk about the joy of creating and returning to that, but without an audience, writing goes nowhere no matter what it might bring us personally.

I'm speaking as the author of 19 books, some of which have sold better than I expected, some worse.

I think the letter writer needs some reality checking, and Cary, you should not be downplaying or ignoring the power of his poisonous sales figures. Fiction is an extremely hard sell right now. Memoirs and creative nonfiction are--as my agent put it--flying out the door. I would recommend something far more practical and less mystical to this man who feels like quitting. Is there a memoir in his experience? Is his and his wife's story something he would enjoy telling? He should consult with his agent and stop pushing the novels, which are sadly, a drug on the current depressed market.

It sounds as if the movie would have benefited by some of the actors appearing under their own names: Jadagrace, Moon Bloodgood, Anton Yelchin. There'd at least be something worth thinking about.

That's it, exactly. Allen always seemed the kind of singer who was utterly forgettable (music, voice, style, looks), drowned out by table talk, laughter, and the cash register. But I guess it's going to ka-ching for him now.

For those who don't understand how shame functions and what it is, I highly recommend a book that's influenced the entire national discussion about shame for the last twenty-five years:

http://www.amazon.com/Shame-Power-Caring-Gershen-Kaufman/dp/0870470531/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243511537&sr=1-1

The book took off decades ago in the Recovery movement and profoundly influenced pop culture through its knockoffs--even "Clueless" takes something from it.

I love Gingrich's shift to the passive voice: "The word 'racist' should not have been applied--" as if he didn't say it, but it was someone said out there in the coldness of space, utterly detached from human agency.