The many, unsuspected uses of Twitter: separating the wheat from the chaff
2 July 2009
Twitter has certainly provided ample exposure lately to the real level of craft, intellect, and — dare I say it? — soul behind some of consumer culture’s leading literary products: Today’s revealing tantrum about being criticized comes from Ayelet Waldman (previously known for writing maybe a little too much about what it’s like to have sex with Michael Chabon).
As Mary Elizabeth Williams reports in a story for Salon (which we first saw on Galleycat), after critic Jill Lepore gave Waldman’s newest book about having sex with Michael Chabon, Bad Mother, a bad review in The New Yorker, Waldman felt compelled to go to her Twitter account and compose a deft retort: “May Jill Lepore rot in hell. That is all.”
But alas — probably, it won’t be.
My God, this is like those teenagers in South Wales who all started killig themselves one after the other! Maybe writers shouldn’t be allowed to have twitter accounts, it’s like crack to them - the instant, fatal hit. Many’s the evening I’ve spent with my fingertips hovering fretfully over my Facebook status field…