Novelist Jane Smiley's epistolary relationship with the New York Times.

But my literary assessment doesn't disturb Smiley.

"These letters are things that I dash off," she says. "When writing letters to the editor, I'm very, very angry." Novel writing allows a leisurely and playful approach to a subject, she says. Letters to the editor require a writer to express a conventional thought in an expressive way that will capture immediate attention. The only other publication Smiley pesters with letters to the editor is the Guardian, her other daily newspaper. So far, the Guardian has resisted.

Smiley says her first letters to the Times were edited heavily, with excess verbiage getting the knife. Now that she understands the formula, she does the editors' work for them, submitting more succinct notes.

"I can often tell which letter is going to fly," she says.

"She writes a good short letter," agrees Times letters editor Feyer.

Feyer calls Smiley a "wonderful writer" whose letters often speak for many other people and describes her as belonging to the small family of successful letter writers who understand the page's preference for compact arguments over elaborate treatises.

Smiley may never match the slugging percentage of Louis Jay Herman. In eight years after his retirement in 1987, Herman submitted 859 letters to the Times, 123 of which were printed, according to his records. The accomplishment earned Herman a Times obituary ("Linguist And a Devoted Man of Letters") upon his death in 1996. Brown University professor of philosophy Felicia Ackerman is another Times letter-writing legend, immortalized in a September 2001 Lingua Franca piece by Christopher Shea.

Will this Slate article jinx Smiley's Times streak?

"It may have that effect," says Feyer. "It's probably not going to help her chances."

Smiley shrugs off that possibility.

"One door closes, and maybe the door to the Guardian opens."