Melville House Books

Alice Hoffman: Don't get her mad

A day after throwing an ugly tantrum on Twitter about a (relatively) negative Boston Globe review of her new book, Alice Hoffman issued a classic politician’s apology late yesterday — the old conditional “I’m sorry if I offended anyone,” which is what she actually said, meaning “I’m only sorry if you’re offended, which means I’m not really sorry and I’m making it your responsibility, not mine.”

The statement came not through Hoffman’s publisher, Crown Books imprint Shaye Areheart, but through her personal publicist. It’s not hard to imagine that the publicity department at Crown has had enough of Alice Hoffman for a while.

Not after her tirade on Sunday, anyway: Hoffman couldn’t seem to stop herself, posting comment after comment on her Twitter page, repeatedly insulting the reviewer of the book, Roberta Silman, whom she didn’t seem to realize has had numerous stories in the New Yorker and is a widely published critic (“Now any idiot can be a criticâ€), at one point implying that there was something sexist about the review (“Girls are taught to be gracious and keep their mouths shut. We don’t have to”), or trashing the entire newspaper (“No wonder there is no book section in the Globe anymore — they don’t care about their readers, why should we care about them”), then the entire city (“This is a town where a barking dog is the second top story on the news”), along the way spewing some badly written melodramatic general venom (“And we writers don’t have to say nothing when someone tries to destroy us”) and culminating in the posting of Silman’s cell phone number (mis-typed) and private email address (although she failed to spell “verizon†correctly). Hoffman thuggishly instructed her followers to “tell her what u think of snarky critics.â€

It got so nasty Washington Post fiction editor Ron Charles repri-Tweeted her (calling her actions “just plain immatureâ€), but Hoffman kept going. (Maybe because the Post also gave a lukewarm review, saying “This radiant finale reminds us what a satisfying novelist Alice Hoffman can be, when she feels like it.â€)

Hours later, soon after the story was picked up by Gawker (“Look Who’s Snarking Now“) and others, Hoffman’s Twitter page (formerly @alicehof) abruptly shut down, with all of her comments apparently deleted from the system — not an easy thing to do, as far as we can tell. Of course, too late for Hoffman — the Gawker link above includes screen captures of some of her craziest tweets. Roberta Silman, meanwhile, tells Carolyn Kellogg in a post at Jacket Copy that she was off in the hills and didn’t know anything about the ruckus, and didn’t get much contact out of it, thanks to Hoffman’s bad typing.)

Meanwhile, here’s the full text of her apology — which, remember, only kicks in if you tell her (say, at her website, or at her Twitter page if it ever comes back up) that you’re offended.

I feel this whole situation has been completely blown out of proportion. Of course I was dismayed by Roberta Silman’s review which gave away the plot of the novel, and in the heat of the moment I responded strongly and I wish I hadn’t. I’m sorry if I offended anyone. Reviewers are entitled to their opinions and that’s the name of the game in publishing. I hope my readers understand that I didn’t mean to hurt anyone and I’m truly sorry if I did.

Best,
Alice Hoffman

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.