Philip Weiss and Zo‰ Heller

Dear Harry,

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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

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