In the interests of preserving literary decency and maintaining auctorial sanity, we have joined the Rake’s campaign to remain silent about authors who sound like something you can buy a dozen of at the supermarket. We figure this will add a few years to our lives and focus our fury towards more deserving targets.

Hey, Meg Wolitzer! Please shut up about your Puritanical hang-ups, check yourself into therapy, and get over yourself. The notion that novelists should refrain from writing about sex because, heaven forbid, their children might grow up and be permanently mortified is one of the kookiest, New Agey, and self-affirmative dollops of bullshit I’ve heard of since the Quirkyalone movement.

The true “horror” here is seeing someone obsess so much about the naughty bits that her parents wrote. Most of us in the real world have no problem coming to terms with the idea that other family members not only have sex, but, if they happen to be novelists, happen to write about this very seminal aspect (no pun intended) of the human condition, among many other things. If Meg Wolitzer is indeed “a novelist,” then she should understand that the subconscious is very different from the conscious, that a parent should probably be judged on their maternal and paternal gestures rather than their novels, and that characters do not necessarily reflect the total beings of their authors.

Or to put it another way: if Wolitzer’s looking for fey titiliation, then maybe she might want to incorporate Jude Law, a vat of chocolate fudge, three hermaphrodite midgets, leather chaps, and plenty of rope instead of Mommy’s Dirty Novel.

For those who weren’t annoyed by DFW’s recent article (who knew that visual representations of footnotes could divide the litblog community?), Jeff has the scoop on Ziegler’s attempts to interview DFW. (Short answer: DFW is too shy and dislikes interviews.) Ziegler apparently plan to go over the article over several shows. Whether Ziegler plans an aural equivalent to footnotes is anyone’s guess.

SEEN: “An Evening with Supervisor Ross Mirakimi”

Beyond the false intimacy implied by a throng listening to a city supervisor drone on in a lecture hall, there’s the nagging insinuation that good old Ross is going to honor his audience with a cabaret act. In which case, he’d have our full-fledged support, but only if singing in the style of Burt Bacharach became part of the quorum.

TownOnline: “Literary agents say there is a $5 million advance waiting if she decides to publish her prison memoirs.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

My cellmate Alice finally took my advice about the jumpsuit. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, aside from avoiding the pitfalls of insider trading and never underestimating the value of appearing naked beneath bedsheets, it’s that you can always make your interior space your own — even when you’re confronted with limitations. Alice was able to get an orange scrunchee to match the jumpsuit from Leona, the black marketeer of the penitentiary. Leona demanded four packs of cigarettes for this. I thought this was a high price. But as she explained, “I don’t deal with no friends of gard’nin’ hos!” The scrunchee, which was later confiscated by a guard, helped to bring out the color in Alice’s eyes.

In fact, I think the scrunchee was one of the reasons that Alice stopped beating me up on a nightly basis. Not that I minded. It didn’t cut into my routine too much. Even in the joint, I still slept about four hours a night. And I was just about getting through to Alice. Before the scrunchee incident, she was beginning to try out my bed-making technique.

I talked with the warden about planting some azaleas and daisies in the exercise yard. The warden, who never really liked my television show, told me in an endearing voice, “Get back in line, Prisoner 9927431!” When I pointed out that wearnig a boutonniere might make his uniform less drab and his day more cheerful, he threw me into the hole.

In solitary confinement, I was able to plan out my comeback scheme. The HGTV people were sending me offer letters. And I had already planned out the potential profits in designer anklet bracelets.

I recommend prison to everyone. Everyone should at least try it once. You learn how to be disciplined. You make new friends. And you have a lot of time to think about things.