Dear Digby
A Novel
Published on 10. June 2014
218 pages
978-1-4804-8480-1 (ISBN)
Description
An oddball newspaper editor advises eccentric readers-and reckons with her own painful past in this psychological thriller
Willis Digby is the letters editor at Sis ( Sisterhood) magazine, a job that drives her mad. A Miss Lonelyhearts for feminists, Willis plows through correspondence that fluctuates from the predictable, boosterish boilerplate to letters challenging conventional notions of sanity, struggling to find a balance in her selections for publication in the landmark journal. Memorable letters include those from a woman who sprinkles cat food into her husband's breakfast cereal each morning, one from a woman convinced that the man on the label of her cleaning products is harassing her, and endless gender-specific descriptions of peculiar sexual proclivities.
As Digby strikes up an unconventional friendship with one of her correspondents, she also confronts a harrowing childhood incident that has come back to haunt her. At once witty and powerful, Dear Digby is a thrilling tragicomedy that explores the shifting borders of the self, or selves, that define individual sanity and conventional thought, and redefine communication among lost souls.
Willis Digby is the letters editor at Sis ( Sisterhood) magazine, a job that drives her mad. A Miss Lonelyhearts for feminists, Willis plows through correspondence that fluctuates from the predictable, boosterish boilerplate to letters challenging conventional notions of sanity, struggling to find a balance in her selections for publication in the landmark journal. Memorable letters include those from a woman who sprinkles cat food into her husband's breakfast cereal each morning, one from a woman convinced that the man on the label of her cleaning products is harassing her, and endless gender-specific descriptions of peculiar sexual proclivities.
As Digby strikes up an unconventional friendship with one of her correspondents, she also confronts a harrowing childhood incident that has come back to haunt her. At once witty and powerful, Dear Digby is a thrilling tragicomedy that explores the shifting borders of the self, or selves, that define individual sanity and conventional thought, and redefine communication among lost souls.
More details
Person
Carol Muske-Dukes is the author of eight books of poems, four novels, and two essay collections, and is an editor of two anthologies, including
Crossing State Lines: An American Renga, which she coedited with Bob Holman. Many of her books have been New York Times Notable selections. Muske-Dukes is a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Southern California, where she founded the PhD program in creative writing and literature, and she recently fulfilled her appointment as poet laureate of California, appointed by the governor's office. Her poetry collection
Sparrow was a National Book Award finalist and she is a six-time Pushcart Prize winner. She writes for the
New York Times Book Review and the
New York Times op-ed page, the
Los Angeles Times, the Huffington Post, and the
New Yorker's
Page-Turner blog. Her poems have been published and anthologized widely, including in several editions of
Best American Poetry. Muske-Dukes has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Library of Congress award, Barnes & Noble's Writer for Writers Award, and many other honors. She lives in Southern California and New York.
Content
- Intro
- Cover
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Epigraph
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- About the Author
- Copyright
