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Recently in Salon Books

Bedside salivating
Some cookbooks make such great reading (and such lousy guides to fixing dinner) that you never need to take them into the kitchen.
By Ann Hodgman
[12/10/99]

Reviews
"Swaggart" by Ann Rowe Seaman
A thorough biography of the disgraced televangelist drops a bombshell about his Louisiana childhood.
By Virginia Vitzthum
[12/10/99]

Reviews
"20th-Century Dreams" by Nik Cohn and Guy Peellaert
The writer-and-artist team's new bout of cultural nausea is like a tabloid that might be sold at the Whitney Museum.
By Charles Taylor
[12/09/99]

Reviews
"Fortune's Rocks" by Anita Shreve
It takes place in the late 19th century, but the sexy feminism in this novel is very late 20th century.
By Sarah Harrison Smith
[12/08/99]

Ivory Tower
Memories of an Aggie Bonfire boy
Texas A&M's annual ritual, which killed 12 this year, is not just a football rally. It's a homoerotic rite of passage.
By Dave Morris
[12/08/99]

Complete archives for Books

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The earliest episode I remember occurred in my first year of teaching, at a junior high school in Palo Alto. "Mara," a precocious little seventh-grader, mailed me booklets of scented love poems, bound in pink ribbons, into which she had poured her delicate soul. She lingered after class to discuss whatever she could manufacture as an excuse, staking out a spot on the edge of a desk so she could swing a lithe leg in what she thought was irresistible provocation. Of course I enjoyed it. Who doesn't enjoy being adored? But soon enough, as things go, she carried her capacity for crushes to a different recipient. The others who took her place over the next couple of years became a source of both delight and irritation as my wife and I handled their mysterious phone calls and fervent little gifts.

The scariest crush I've ever been on the receiving end of occurred about four years ago, at Columbia College. "Diane" was an invisible student in my philosophy class for a month or so before she showed up in my office one afternoon bearing news of the historic inevitability of our involvement with each other.

"There's just something about you. I mean, it's about time we talked to each other, don't you think?" Having entered my slum-like office one morning, she balanced herself on the edge of my mangy easy chair and spoke with airy self-assurance. "I'm Diane Weintraub, from your Tuesday philosophy class."

"Diane, huh." I glanced up and gave her the once-over. I was in a perfunctory mood and resented the intrusion. She backed away slightly, startled, uneasy, but didn't try to avoid my gaze.

Oh man, I thought, this is going to be difficult. Diane was drastically overweight and homely in the most unsavory fashion: jowly, beady-eyed, somewhat resembling a stuffed cobra. But my sexist, body-fetishistic first impressions had been wrong before, so I immediately countered my own perception and gave her the benefit of the doubt.

"Well, what do we need to discuss?" I didn't want to talk to her, but there she was. Her face twisted into a ghastly, reddish smile. "I was meant to take your philosophy class, wasn't I? I mean, we had to meet each other. It is our destiny."

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