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Sam Lipsyte and Lucinda Rosenfeld

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What Exactly Is a Mandrake Root?

By Lucinda Rosenfeld
Posted Monday, Nov. 13, 2000, at 4:26 PM ET

Dear Sam,

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Based on the first reader "postings"--which I made the mistake of glancing at on my way back from New York Hospital (routine neurology check-up, though it might be noted that I have the same neurologist as former MTV VJ Karen Duffy, rendering me but three degrees of separation away from Duffy ex, Dwight Yoakum)--I'm getting a bad feeling that, thanks to the debatably glib tone and vacuous content of my first b.t. dispatch, a) everyone in the world hates me, and b) I've already managed to alienate about three-fifths of our readership. So first I want to apologize to you, Sam, for completely botching this assignment if that's what I've done: I was under the apparently mistaken impression that there were enough "serious people" out there saying "serious things" about what can only be described as a seriously f--cked up situation as to merit a few dumb jokes and throw-away lines on behalf of the Lazy Novelist community. I guess I was wrong.

In any case, I promise to try harder in the future. And readers--if there are any of you left (Why are people on the Web so unforgiving?!)--I do have a heart as well as a soul. And I'm as disturbed and perturbed as the next person by what's gone and going down in Florida. (Can't say I see the fairness in "selective" hand recounts, though it's not clear when and if fairness had anything to do with the election down there.) Never mind in Texas. (It was the image of W. "playing Oval Office" in the governor's mansion this past weekend that pushed me over the edge of nonpartisan faith in the electoral process.) And if, in my first e-mail, I chose to concentrate on the President Not-Quite-Elect's dermatological problems, that's because they seemed like a perfect metaphor for ... But enough of that literary garbage.

I had a total Proustian moment at your mention of that Billy Idol rumor, which I last heard in about eighth grade, i.e., around the same time that word "got out" that Madonna had AIDS (Or was it Michael Stipe?) and Richard Gere was holed up in an unnamed L.A. hospital pending an unspeakable incident with a gerbil. (Or was it a hamster?) I think you're right that urban legends had a longer shelf-life in the pre-Internet era, but "rich" seems to me a slightly overgenerous word to describe their content. (Sure you're not just feeling nostalgic for your Duran Duran days, Sam??)

Speaking of vile tales of questionable veracity, a British newspaper is reporting that stroke sufferers may benefit from having testicle tissue grafted onto their brains. Sounds like a good news, bad news kind of situation. ...

More tk,
Lucinda

P.S. By the way, what exactly is a mandrake root?