Mark Halperin, Ed Schultz: The Cure

I’m totally unconnected to this story, I don’t watch tv (except for sports now and then, and a movie maybe every two months), and I don’t read Time mag, where Halperin apparently writes.  So I don’t have any feelings about him one way or the other.  Ditto on Schultz, who insulted Laura Ingraham and got suspended.

So you can color me indifferent.  I don’t care what they say on tv or on talk radio;  it’s fine with me.  You want to hurl an epithet, go for it.  And if folks are offended, well, they can join me and turn off the tv or stop reading Time or whatever.

What’s the most terrible thing that can happen to a writer?  To know that nobody is reading his stuff.  So if you’re angry, send the most powerful message imaginable and just dial out.

There’s lots of good books around, by the way.  And if reading is too great a burden, get the audio version.

Like what?  you ask.  I answer with two novels:  The Historian (a terrific story about the search for the real Count Dracula), and The Dream of Scipio, which my friend Herb Meyer assigned for therapy, and which did indeed help me.  For a few hours anyway.

Oh, and a great new book about Naples.  Yeah I know it’s overpriced, but it’s less than renting a private jet…and such a cool title (Virgil’s Golden Egg and Other Neapolitan Miracles)