Jun 28

00

LETTER NEVER SENT

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To the Editor,

Nuh uh to ***’s attempt at summarizing what went on at last week’s *** reading. Most of us who were actually there enjoyed ***’s chipper lack of fealty to the notorious – and very present – snobbery and egomania of ***. To scold *** as ‘ill-prepared’ and ‘arrogant’ is to live down to the predictable anglophilic starfuckery trampling literary coverage in this country, as well as completely miss the point. Though not as much as characterizing ***’s ludicrously mawkish monetization of his father’s death as ‘moving.’

The event was advertised as a conversation between the two writers, and that’s what it was. Besides, witnessing a novelist whose commodified bad-boy sheen has been inescapable even after he got old and started writing about Important Things, whose defiance of politeness and authority has been stage-managed shtick for decades, whose dental surgery and marital status have fired more debate than anything he’s ever written, be asked if he’d be willing to “show us your teeth” is, I propose, a highlight of the season.

Yours,

***