HOME / the breakfast table: An e-mail conversation about the news of the day.

Philip Weiss and Zo‰ Heller

the breakfast table:
entries

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

On Getting To Know Your Second-rateness

By Zo‰ Heller
Posted Wednesday, June 9, 1999, at 1:46 PM ET

Dear Philip,

RSS

I am so grateful to you for sharing "man panties" with me, I am almost prepared to forgive you the patronizing tone of your American language lessons. Man panties. Man panties. I love it. ("Banana hammock", by contrast, is merely vulgar--but no more than one would expect from that decadent rag Cosmo.)

About Salieri, etc.--I'm not saying it was good for his mental health to envy Mozart, just that it was natural and rational. Of course, if one had been Salieri's mother or girlfriend, one would have encouraged him to forget about that stupidhead Amadeus and concentrate on cultivating his own (slim) talent. But the truth is, he was a gnat to the behemoth of Mozart's genius and he would have been unusually obtuse not to be sensible of the disparity. You're right--we should stop worrying about our more brilliant chums and strive, in the words of the U.S. Army jingle, to be all that we can be. I just think that's a much harder task than you let on. Knowledge of one's second-rateness is for most people simply inconsistent with contentment.

As for Marla--sure, she'll survive. I'm not staying up nights worrying how she's going to pay her acting coach. But I still think $2 million is a paltry sum for having withstood that cretinous lunk for as long as she did. I also think there's something distasteful about fathers who live lives of vastly greater wealth and luxury than their offspring. On $2 million, little Tiffany isn't going shoeless any time soon, but she's certainly dropped out of her daddy's league.

Now, what about the Abner Louima stuff? Yesterday's outcome feels to me like a very unsatisfactory, incomplete sort of conclusion to the case.

Love,
Z

the breakfast table:
entries

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16