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Philip Weiss and Zo‰ Heller

the breakfast table
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from: Philip Weiss

Man Panties and Ralph Waldo

Posted Wednesday, June 9, 1999, at 11:58 AM ET

Dear Zoë,

My turn to correct you. I don't wear knickers, don't wear panties. Used to wear bikini briefs, in fetching rainbow hues, till a friend with a booming Southern accent, Inman Majors, nephew to Johnny Majors of Tennessee football fame, dubbed them "man panties." Lately I saw a new name for man panties in Cosmopolitan: "banana hammock." Why am I reading Cosmo? Ah, the imponderable questions.

You are right about le Carré. He does protest too much on this subject; he struck me as vain, easily wounded in precisely the egoistic manner that he said it was one's artistic duty to rise above. But all gurus are flawed, and I think you're wrong to say that the Salieris of the world are right to note the pecking order. Screw the pecking order. The New Age lesson I was offering is that everyone should find out who they are, and be that. I'm talking Emersonian human-potential movement. Salieri had neurotic issues about Mozart that had nothing to do with Mozart and everything to do with Salieri. He should have done the hard work of figuring out who Salieri was, and maybe we would be buying tickets to his concerti now. As for the truly second-rate, I think they are happy being second-rate. First rate or second rate or third, if you start fretting about competition, and status, you are soon miserable. Yes we all do it (even le Carré), but it's not productive energy.

I quibble with you, too, on Marla Maples. Donald Trump is plainly a mingy guy, but Marla signed the pre-nup, chose not to fight it in court now, and did well, I think, by the marriage. She was a nobody before. She got a glamorous career out of this, treading the boards, plus $2 million. This is hardly the paradigm of corporate wife who gives up her life to make the executive flourish. I don't know that it fits your (uncharacteristically pursy) mistress/prostitute paradigm either. Marla bloomed. Let 100 flowers bloom, sayeth Donald.

Love,
Philip

P.S.: Of course I remember our meeting. The Players Club, and I was no player. The scene is engraved in the largest part of my brain, the imbecilum, which is dedicated to my social humiliations. It's why I stay online.

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Philip Weiss

Man Panties and Ralph Waldo

Posted Wednesday, June 9, 1999, at 11:58 AM 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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