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Sam Lipsyte and Lucinda Rosenfeld

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Ghostwriter in the Sky

By Sam Lipsyte
Posted Thursday, Nov. 16, 2000, at 11:52 AM ET

Lucinda,

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Interesting obit in the paper today. William G. Harrington, a 68-year-old thriller writer, seems to have killed himself but not before writing his own obituary in which he claimed to have ghostwritten books for Harold Robbins and Margaret Truman. Poor bastard's agent, also Truman's agent, rushed to the scene to deny it, saying Harrington only did research for them. Even in death there's a client list pecking order, and you'd better not mess with it. I do like the obituary part, though. Someone should teach a Learning Annex course on Image-Handling from the Spiritworld.

Strange for me to come across this now, too, on the occasion of our penultimate "Breakfast (more like brunch, really, or all-day-at-the-cafe) Table" correspondence, because I was joking with a man who often pretends to be my friend that my last letter should be some kind of professional suicide note. I'd leave my books to all the people I "borrowed" them from, and my PowerBook to you. Then I'd be off to some yoga retreat, but not before I let it be known to all the world that I wrote What She Saw ...

Purity of essence,
Sam

P.S.: Did you see Stanley Fish's op-ed in the New York Times yesterday? He said both Gore and Bush are politicians, and it would be indecent for them to act otherwise. Also, everybody's doing the "hand-count" joke now, so I'll recuse myself from it.