Elaine Showalter and Christopher Benfey

Dear Elaine,

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The Beach at the beach--it's easy to remember, and I'll take it along. The Times excludes Hannibal from the male beach genre, calling it, or rather him, "a genre unto himself." Tommy will be mighty pleased to get Harry Potter III from his London fairy godmother. Now, try to think of something for grandson Jack that can only be purchased in Amherst, Mass.

Our beach departure Saturday may be delayed by the Women's World Cup. No TV at the beach house. In Tuesday's Times there was a profile of the coach, Tony DiCicco. Mia Hamm offered him "the aphorism that he has hung out on his coaching shingle." Not sure about how literally we're to take that stuff about the shingle. The aphorism: "Coach us like men, treat us like women." I was puzzled by this, but Jere Longman explains. The players on the American team "want to be pushed and challenged like all elite athletes, and they play with ravenous assertion, but they do not want a coach in their face, yelling, singling anyone out for criticism in front of others." As opposed to male athletes, who love being singled out for criticism in front of others? I say, as I head off (in two minutes) to Tommy's Little League game, "Coach us all like men, and treat us like women." Then we can all be ravenously assertive.

I was hoping for a Gemma Bovary update. Our stateside Emma B. is spreading culture in the East Village. "Paint sells well" at the Astor Place Kmart, I learned in today's "Metro" section, "as does Martha Stewart's line of bed and bath items." But she'd better watch out. Cher, as yesterday's Times reported, also has a line of home furnishings.

Oh, and the Turkish dig I mentioned. A Dutch engineer and architect called Crijns has gathered funds to dig up the Tut-like (he hopes) tomb of King Antiochus, who was crowned on July 14, 109 B.C. Crijns knows where to dig because his wife sensed the whereabouts of the tomb in a clairvoyant trance. She is "convinced that she knew the history" of King A. because she had "lived a previous life," etc. Crijns hired a geophysicist who has located a pocket that may be the tomb, and this location, according to the geophysicist, "does not contradict" Mrs. Crijn's inspired guess. I like that delicately hedged "does not contradict." Don't bite the hand that feeds you.

Well, thanks for the trans-pond intelligence, Elaine. I'll wave across the waters.

Chris

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