PARODY
Parody "In his celebration of The New York Review of Books, James Wolcott writes of Mary McCarthy's allegedly devastating review of my book 'The Best and the Brightest.' He is too easily...
...Let me remind you that this book perched atop your local newspaper's best-seller list for nearly a year in 1972 and that in 1975 a young man in Worcester, Massachusetts, stopped me on the street and declared that he "was sorry to see it end...
...Mary Lee Johnson Principal Green Acres Junior High School Green Acres, Ohio Dear Ms...
...But I can in no way turn my back on one of the malevolent episodes of recent American literary history and am even now completing my 4,200-page life's work, "The Author Responds," which will finally rebut Ms...
...Her review in no way damaged the book, which reached No...
...Timmy Smith's education will not be complete if he does not finish it...
...Ewell's 8th-grade history class, has asked to be excused from a book report on my masterwork, "The Best and the Brightest," on the grounds that it is "too long...
...McCarthy is as dead as a door nail...
...That was 35 years ago...
...McCarthy's charges point by point...
...In sum, let us not forget that "The Best and the Brightest" stands alone at the pinnacle of American literature...
...1 on the New York Times best-seller list and stayed on a 10-book list for 36 weeks, and still remains one of the primary works trying to explain how and why we went to war in Vietnam...
...Often when I do, someone nearby will interject, "Give it a rest, Grandpa...
...Every word she ever uttered was a lie including "a" and "the...
...All of this explains why the Doubleday bookstore in Topeka felt that my book merited placement on a shelf right at eye level in the middle of the general non-fiction section, rather than lower down, where some less well-received books were stored...
...Johnson, News has reached me that Timmy Smith, in Mr...
...David Halberstam, letter to the editor, New York Times Book Review, October, 25, 1998 DAVID HALBERSTAM, ESQ...
...In the meantime I must add that Ms...
...Frequently I remark on the injustice of Ms...
...McCarthy never actually went to Vietnam and in fact wrote her "dispatches" from the war after seeing "The Green Berets" starring John Wayne...
...It's time to move on...
...Sincerely, David Halberstam New York...
...I, on the other hand, was accepted as a peer by the fighting men in "Nam" (one of whom once jocularly said to me, "Get off my stool, Peckerhead...
...And I was prized as an honest reporter by the nation's most powerful leaders, notwithstanding the fact that Dean Rusk called me Arnaud de Borchgrave until the end of his days...
...Perhaps Timmy Smith has somehow been influenced by Mary McCarthy's notorious review in The New York Review of Books...
...Parody "In his celebration of The New York Review of Books, James Wolcott writes of Mary McCarthy's allegedly devastating review of my book 'The Best and the Brightest.' He is too easily devastated...
...McCarthy's envy-ridden essay...
...Let me merely declare categorically that her review in no way devastated my book, as evidenced by the fact that I am still appearing at extremely well-received authors lunches while Ms...
Vol. 4 • November 1998 • No. 9
