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Philip Weiss and Zo‰ Heller

the breakfast table
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from: Philip Weiss

Mea Culpa

Posted Thursday, June 10, 1999, at 6:37 PM ET

Dear Harry,

You and Zoë have my apology. My last was intended as a literary joke, a parody of the intimacy states that e-mail correspondence produces. Truly, I have enjoyed my rapport with your partner and am ashamed that what I wrote should have ended it so violently, and with such apparent distress to you and her. Ordinarily I would have mulled same, but we were under deadline, and as a fiction writer I have learned to exalt risk. My criticism of your note to me is that you seem flatfooted and literal as a reader. My apologies to Slate readers who were offended, too. But I am not ready to disown my writing. I can imagine/I hope there are readers who found my last amusing, readers for whom the joke worked. Once I get past the shock of this encounter, perhaps I'll be among them.

Philip

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Philip Weiss

Mea Culpa

Posted Thursday, June 10, 1999, at 6:37 PM ET
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Philip Weiss is a novelist and a columnist for the New York Observer. Zo‰ Heller lives in New York and writes for British papers.
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