2009 has been a busy year for aggrieved authors.

This summer, Alice Hoffman infamously lashed out on Twitter at Boston Globe critic Robert Silman, who had given her novel a lukewarm review. Hoffman called Silman “a moron,” and added, “Now any idiot can be a critic.”

A few weeks later, Alain de Botton responded to a negative review by commenting on the reviewer’s blog: “I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make.”

In October, Maurie Sendak, responding to concerns that Where the Wild Things Are may be too scary for children, told worried parents to “go to hell.”

And last month, a kerfuffle erupted on the Amazon page for romance author Candace Sams’ novel, Electra Galaxy’s Mr. Interstellar Feller. Negative reviewers were attacked by a user called NiteflyrOne, who was soon exposed to be Candace Sams herself. After 15 pages of back-and-forth rancor (most of which has been deleted by Amazon), Sams threatened to report everyone to the FBI.

Although these sort of sophomoric responses baffle me–as writers, aren’t we trained to communicate our thoughts rationally, preferably after many revisions?–I can understand where they’re coming from. Read more »

Ever fall in love with someone and then find out that they’re kind of an ass? Yeah…me too. The first Rilke that ever crossed my hands was Letters to a Young Poet, and I still remember the effect it had on me. I felt as if I had found my soul mate….if he had been in the room (and alive) I would have jumped him on the spot. There is a vibrant grace and poignant longing in every bit of Rilke I have read, and the first elegy of his Duino Elegies has the power to hit some g-spot deep in my heart and bring me to tears. So finding out that he was actually kind of a whiney, narcissistic brat was analogous to finding out as a kid that Santa Claus didn’t really exist.

According to Robert Vilain, the Rilke I’m having an affair with in my head is NOT in fact the same Rilke who inhabited this planet. Real Rilke was “vain, self-pitying, obsessive, narcissistic, snobbish, whining, arrogant, childish, demanding, lachrymose and neurotic, as well as being given to tantrums and panics.” However, apparently my g-spot is not the only one he has been able to hit; even though he was a bit of an ass, Rilke was also “magnetically attractive to a series of women.” 

So what does it mean when you fall in love with someone who isn’t a very nice person? And should you try to separate the artist from the art? And why doesn’t Rilke ever return my phone calls?! Read more »