Tod Goldberg

The Dumbest Piece Of Hate Mail Ever

Normally when someone gets enough anger inside of them to actually write me a letter telling me I'm an asshole, the reasoning is pretty clear. They don't like my books. They don't like my brother, but he moderates their comments. They're fucktards and I've told them so. They're this guy and they are mad about White Lion breaking up, presumably. They work at Parade and don't really appreciate me putting their name on this blog connected to some dreadful corporate oversight (like, you know, the non-death or actual death of several different celebrities, political figures and horses) and would appreciate my removing their name from said connection. They had their book reviewed by me somewhere and now are placing a pox on me. At any rate, like i said, the path is usually pretty clear.  

And then along came Bronson. Or, well, along came this email from Nancy Wilkinson-Thomas:

I want you to know how upset I am that we traveled all the way from Indian Wells,where we were staying, to Palm Springs to eat at the restaurant Never On Wednesday based on your review in the latest Palm Springs Life. Did you bother to eat there or did you just write the review from a press release? It's not anywhere I could find on the street. Shame on you. That was an evening of our vacation lost.

I felt bad for poor Nancy, so I wrote her back hoping I might be able to explain the problem:

Thanks for writing. I'm sorry to hear about your lost evening in the desert. Had you visited Palm Springs in 2004, when I wrote the article in question, you probably would have had a lovely evening at Never On Wednesday. If you ever get a time machine, I'd aim for no later than about June of 2005, which is I think when the restaurant closed. The restaurant is simply called Never now. 

She wrote back:

I can't fathom a reason why your magazine would print a story you wrote on a restaurant from six years ago. Isn't that irresponsible of your magazine?

I wrote her back:

They didn't. You picked up a six-year old copy of the magazine. The clue would have been the date on the cover. 

She wrote me back:

This doesn't make any sense to me. And I don't like the tone your emails have taken. You are very accusatory. Please do not write me again. 

So, yeah, I didn't. 

Advance Transcript of Michael Silverblatt's Interview With Patti Smith

On this week's Bookworm (and next week's, too) Michael Silverblatt is interviewing Patti Smith. I've been very fortunate to receive a full transcript of the interview prior to its initial airing on March 4th and thought I'd share this very interesting portion of it with you:

Michael: I am here with Patti Smith on the occasion of the release of her transcendent, iridescent, incandescent and luminescent biography Just Kids. Patti, while reading this work, I was struck not by your life, nor by your music, nor by your musical influences, but by the words on the page themselves. They were like tiny bits of life, each one wrought fine by your fingers, until each word was a word unto itself, and, like time, the words began to move across my face until I found them creeping into my head, not unlike what happens to Chekhov in Wrath of Khan, and not unlike what Chekhov's words first did for those few souls, now dead, who understood Chekhov as well as I do, which is extremely well, and that well is as deep as my arm can go into a jar filled with words, like bobbing apples, and yet. And yet. So I'm curious now if, when you wrote your biography, you'd considered Carver's story "Errand" which illuminates Chekhov's dying moment, though the illumination is dim, like a room at dusk, or like light, but without as much light, so that it's almost light-free, but not quite. Because I felt, while reading Just Kids that you'd lived a life, but that life wasn't over, and thus you decided that to live a life is to live a life, but not let life end without light. Yes?

Patti: Is this a fucking rock show? Where the fuck am I? Is this a fucking rock show? This isn't fucking CBGB's. Where the fuck am I? Who the fuck are you? Are you Richard Fucking Blade? I'll fucking kill you. Did Legs put you up to this? It was Legs, wasn't it?