Super-manic lately! I wouldn't mind except that you know a crash is coming. For me, it's just like amphetamines: restlessness, tingling hands and feet, racing thoughts, inability to sleep and loss of appetite. (During these periods I stock up on Ronnybrook yogurt drinks, the thinking manic's Ensure.) It starts with wild bouts of cooking and baking, segues into weird sassiness to strangers and then settles into a week or so of furious activity. This morning when the alarm went off, I popped up grinning like a jack o' lantern. "Oh, no, The Mania!" said Slim.

I call the mania Rolly Quicklegs, after a small lizard Charlie and I cornered in St. Petersburg, Florida in 1988.

Strong Words

Here's an exchange between me and a reader:

Sadie,
What an interesting article from an interesting website - taking on psychologically rich and complex material like Project Runway! Chelsea Handler! wow, the depth gives one pause. So, reading your armchair therapist moment about Joyce Maynard was especially powerful in its earnest critique of one mother's self-disclosing style and her daughter having a feelings about it.

Clearly, you have strong feelings. About something... Mad Men plotlines? A line skirts? I do hope you continue your cutting edge journalism. What a talent! Your mother must be so proud!

Thanks for sharing!


I responded,

Hi,

I don't know what you've gained by such a personal criticism of me. If you have some more specific issue to discuss, I'd be interested to hear it, but this seems nothing but nasty and unpleasant. I'm sorry if I or the site has offended you, but I don't know what you hope to achieve by being abusive. Again, if you'd really like to address anything, I'd be more than glad.

As ever,

Sadie

She didn't respond! So I wrote again:

Happy Halloween. I must confess, I'm surprised not to have heard from you again. Just as I understand that by writing in a public forum I leave myself open to criticism, I think you probably recognize that in writing me as you did you welcomed further dialogue. I thought about your letter a lot today - not because it was thought-provoking (cruelty rarely is) but because it amazed me that you would feel angry enough to send it. When one receives a note such as yours, there's a sort of Kubler-Ross process. At first it's just a punch in the gut, a physical hurt. Then there is sadness, and you'll be glad to know that you made me cry. Then anger and the urge to lash out. People say to ignore emails like yours, the thinking being that they're not worth dignifying. I can't do that; for one thing, I think anyone who takes the time to write me deserves the courtesy of a personal response. And more than that: it's so important that you realize that when you write like that, diminish a person's livelihood, make cracks about their talent, their parents, diminish them in every way you know how - there are consequences. Even if having a bad day, week, or year, you simply don't, even in this age of the internet, have the right to write cruel and personal things to another person, at her personal email address, and think there's not an actual, feeling person on the other end. I just can't wrap my mind around why an obviously intelligent and thoughtful woman would do so. I hope if ever you have that impulse again, you'll remember that there's a real person out there. And sometimes, we're a little crazy.

Looking forward to hearing from you,
Sadie

She responded:

Dear Sadie,



I guess we both are standing in wonder. Mainly, I am amazed by your language. Did you know what article I was commenting on? I’m cruel and abusive? Your letters sound like they couldn’t have been written by someone as insensitive as the writer of “Holy underlying tension Batman!” and “an act of veiled aggression”. I wrote to you because I found your article so typical of what I don’t like about the internet media spinning around right now. I , unlike you, didn’t choose to make my grumbling public. You wrote what I found to be a snarky, condescending critique about a writer. Not her work, but her. My reaction is to this type of trashing which seems to be on the rise. Ms. Maynard has her way of writing that some will love and some will hate. Our opinions about that are fair game, as you say, because we choose to put it in the public forum. But you didn’t comment on a writer’s work other than multiple snide references to “oversharing”. You passed judgment on a person, and made your own interpretations about a mother and a daughter. Did you ever consider that they were real people?



You may be shocked that your presumption that I wanted you to cry is not true. Like the subjects of your article, you don’t actually know me. I’m not cruel, and I don’t want to make you cry. I did presume you’d have a thicker skin if you’re wielding the kind of pen you seem very comfortable with on your website. I didn’t notice any concern for your subjects feelings, any concern for consequences to real people you write about publicly. Since you seem game for a dialogue, instead of telling me how sadistic I am, where is your moral compass when you pick apart and read into other people? Not their work, but the people themselves. The only thought I had was that you feel they are fair game for anything you want to say, consequences be damned. You said it best :



It's so important that you realize that when you write like that, diminish a person's livelihood, make cracks about their talent, their parents, diminish them in every way you know how - there are consequences.



I’d like more honesty in these cute little articles, not the bee-bee shots from a high horse. Your letters made clear to me that I inadvertently sent you a dose of what I saw you distributing, mean-spirited commentary. In equal amounts of sincerity, I apologize for offending you.


Here is the so-offensive post.

Fun Fun Fun

Going to Poland on Friday so I got The Street of Crocodiles. Also, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. Also, The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman. Also, A Concise History of Poland. Also, The Journey (the H.G. Adler one.) And a Lonely Planet.

Starting to wish I had something lighter for the plane, also a striped tee shirt.

I have a lot to relate. Too exhausted, just now.

When I was in college I was in a writing group with a very smart young woman whose work I liked and who was, besides, considerably more conscientious than I. But there was something in her writing that bothered me: she had written this one character who was supposed to be "quirky." And to indicate that she was quirky, she had a cute quirk: she ate peanut butter out of the jar all the time. And this was a source of bemusement and hilarity to other, less-quirky characters. After a few weeks, I could take it no more.

"Here's the problem, B ----" I said. "This eating peanut butter thing? It's not interesting. It's not quirky. It's not unconventional. Make it Miracle Wip. Make it fluff. Make it tomato paste (my vice -ed.) If you wanna be cute, make it Gentleman's Relish. But this simply isn't working."

Of course, aggressive quirks are lazy anyway. But when they're not even quirky, it's deeply embarrassing for all involved. And this was my biggest problem with 500 Days of Summer, which I finally forced myself to see last night at Cobble Hill Cinema's cheap(ish) night. Yes, it was precious and sophomoric and loaded with the brand of Amazing Girl only Deschanel can sing. Maybe because I was braced for this, it didn't bother me as much as I'd feared. But. Here are the "quirky," "weird" smart-sensitive things they bond over and I kid you not, kid:

1. The Smiths, specifically "There is a Light that Never Goes Out." I actually scrawled on the fly-leaf of my book "ONLY like their biggest radio hit!!!" (Yes, I was alone.)

2. "A Perfect Day for Bananafish."

3. Magritte. And Hopper.

Look, people can have the tastes of high school freshmen for all I care - and who doesn't love The Queen is Dead? - but to hold these things up as obscure indicators of a cultured sensibility had me blushing with shame in my seat.

I had, obviously, other quibbles: the hackneyed "we sell a lie!" tell-off of all the unenlightened suits at the greeting card co. (which, sorry, looked like the best job ever); the straw-man premise that, in fact, cheeky and ironic greeting cards don't make up a big hunk of the business plus about a village's worth of small-press cottage industries; the wise/precocious kid sister; the fact that this flick did for "Sugartown" what Lost in Translation did for "More Than This", that is, instantly removed them from karaoke acceptability forever.

But, I was at least entertained, and not even in a Last Kiss 3-car-pileup way. Deschanel had some good getups, the dude reminded me of my boyfriend, and I laughed once. I'd even go so far as to call it "inoffensive," which I never would have anticipated.

In other news: the bike ride to the theatre was pleasant, and I bought the niftiest, goofiest pair of (maybe 1990) high-waist plaid wool trousers. The shop's owner told me that they were a recent acquisition; she'd bought up the closet of an older lady who was going into a nursing home, the widow of a Madison Avenue advertising executive whose Park Avenue wardrobe was an impeccable archive of 60's-90s UES chic. The lady must have been quite the social X-Ray, as they'll need a deal of hemming. But I hope she knows, somewhere, that her absurd trousers will be treasured. My joy was somewhat punctured when I saw that A) Zooey was wearing similar trousers in the film and B) I'd inadvertently shoplifted a velvet beret from the store. After debating the merits of having Slim plant it, I bit the bullet and sent off a somewhat incoherent email confessing to the unintentional crime. Now I'm wondering if I was framed. But by whom?!

Compare/Contrast

September Issue was disappointing and rather lazy. Breakfast at Shopsin's, wasn't.