Letters to the Editor
hontonoshijin
Published Letters: 141 Editor's Choice: 14
-
marathon
[Read the article: How Oprah ruined the marathon]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Enjoyable. I ran track and cross-country in high school and college in the early sixties, well in advance of aerobics, then returned to running for the rest of my life. Roger Bannister, first to break the 4-minute mile, was my hero. I ran 3.75 miles in 20 minutes in cross-country once, once ran a 4:45 mile. I was entirely mediocre even back then, and knew it. And man do I remember those racing flats. No cushion at all.
I think excessive competition is a sickness--there are far more effective and less damaging paths to excellence--but I do love to see people do things better than anyone else.
It would be hard not to applaud any exercise on the part of porksters, but since there are more and more porksters, one suspects that something is not working.
I do not attribute the tendency to athletics alone, however. All of America has become stunningly tolerant of mediocrity. It is treated as the same as accomplishment. After all, I did my best!
I am a writer (I found one of my areas of excellence). Instead of going after Oprah for what she did to the marathon, I am more inclined to go after the mediocrity she promotes as worthwhile writing.
-
girls
[Read the article: The Daringly Irrelevant Book for Girls?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In order to avoid the influence of Britney, Paris, and the rest, it is not necessary to engage in specific antiquated activities in an attempt to restore the theoretically more wholesome past.
Parents should simply ignore these sorts of people as irrelevant. Britney and Paris are boring to anyone not themselves consumed by ennui, and few young girls are consumed by ennui.
Turn off the frigging tv. Limit computer use. Let it be clear that Paris and her cohorts are the least of your concerns. Begin this as soon as your children are born.
As far as your kids are concerned, you are the experts, the gods, the powers, until you give them reason to think different. If you do not credit these media creations with importance, your children will not do so.
Don't bother to be angry and cry against this nonsense. It has only the power over you that you allow it to have. Simply shrug, admit there are silly people in the world, and go on with your entirely interesting and useful life.
-
v
[Read the article: Feminists want "vagina" all to themselves?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Vagina is a stark and clinical word not so much from connotation as from sound. (The fact is no less familiar than the occurrence of the penis--almost everybody has at one or the other, so what's all the big whoop? Shouldn't we be used to this by now?)
I rather like vayjayjay, but the problem is that the word is too long. Nobody wants to say three syllables. People prefer words that fit comfortably in the mouth and are easy to say. May I suggest "vayjay," especially since it is difficult to see a source in the original for the extra j-sound?
Of course, courtesy suggests that you use whatever terminology the person you are speaking to prefers. Since it is women who have vaginas, I will follow whatever consensus they arrive at, if any. Otherwise I shall appeal to wit and courtesy.
-
open access
[Read the article: The Borgesian open-access library ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There will never be blogs covering all possible situations in all possible universes. There would have to be more blogs than universes, and as many blogs in each universe as phenomena in that universe. Were you being hyperbolic?
You can add finite quantities as long as you wish but you will never reach infinite. A finite number of agencies, no matter how large, can never produce an infinite number of results.
-
words to live by
[Read the article: Words to live by ... sort of]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Family is good. It gives you a reason to hang around people with whom you have nothing in common.
-
mailer
[Read the article: Norman Mailer 1923 - 2007]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Writers have the same obligations to be decent humans as other people do. Time will not and should not, Auden to the contrary, "forgive [them] for writing well."
That said, as a writer who never met Mailer, my primary evaluation of him stems from his writing. I found The Naked and the Dead clumsy and dull, American Dream frighteningly unhinged, and Tough Guys Don't Dance preposterous. I read the self-promotion about his participation in the 1968 Washington protests, and while we agreed about the war, I wondered why I was reading about Mailer in the bathroom. After that I quit reading him because I felt he had little to offer.
Have always found it amusing that the people who love the sound of their own voices thought he was such a big talent. Just goes to show how far bluster will carry you among the insecure.
I admire a good deal of what he did, though not his macho posturing and his writing. I enjoyed his theatrical "pot-stirring" (as another poster called it).
Courage, however, has little to do with belligerence.
-
mailer letter correction
[Read the article: Norman Mailer 1923 - 2007]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I came back to this thread to correct a mistake in my last posting. When I quoted Auden's line (with a change), I had him writing "pardon" instead of "pardons." Bugs me to misquote a poet I really like. Would have to change the syntax of my sentence, but shouldn't have missed this.
Reading through other letters, I noticed the post from Nathforde. Two things: 1) It hardly seems accurate to characterize ALL the letters posted as attacking Mailer. It is true, I have reservations about his talent, and so am willing to suffer Nathforde's scorn, but many of these writers praise Mailer. 2) What is it exactly about dying that implies we should be less than honest regarding how we feel about the person who dies? Does the person suddenly become more virtuous, more talented? I would agree that it is chickenshit to pile on a person only after they die, when they cannot fight back. But I, and many others, have openly said what we thought while Mailer was alive. Why should we pretend now that we didn't think it? And incidentally, Nathforde, it is you who connects Mailer to Anna Nicole Smith. None of the rest of us suggested such a thing. In my opinion, of the two, Mailer was unquestionably the more gifted writer.