Salon | Letters to the editor

_______________SOBER TRUTHS BY CAROLINE KNAPP AND THE BEAUTY OF ALCOHOL BY DAVID BOWMAN (03/01/99)

What were you thinking when you juxtaposed the Carolyn Knapp article on longer-term sobriety with the David Bowman silliness on beer-drinking? Was this an attempt at irony? Humor? Some weird kind of balance? Knapp may take herself way too seriously, but the beery guy's writing is about as interesting as a smoker's belligerent defense of cigarettes.
-- John Mihelic
Minneapolis
David Bowman asks, in all apparent sincerity, "Why on earth would anyone want to face a day completely straight or sober?" Then he answers that it's because "in the end alcohol kills the body." As someone who enjoys a glass of good wine or a shot of Glenmorangie or a cold beer, all I can say is that the world is a darned interesting place that, for me, isn't improved one bit by being anything other than sober. Fear of alcohol has nothing whatever to do with how I regulate my use of it; getting everything I can out of life has everything to do with it.
-- Lisa Hirsch
I found David Bowman's paean to booze to be a strange counter to the article discussing one person's account of her battle to remain sober. The article was below what I have come to expect from Salon. It lacked the essential factor of reality that has made so much of your publication nightly reading. In my 40 years as an adult, I have known many who drink and many who work very hard not to drink, but I have never met a person like Bowman. The article was too facile, lacked depth and was not sufficiently funny to be considered as comic. This topic deserves a better treatment.
-- R. Culp
One of the reasons I did not buy or read Carolyn Knapp's book about her recovery was the simple truths that I heard in the rooms of AA. I remember this big guy sitting in a chair in a room in Spring Lake, N.J., telling me that you didn't get your brain back until you were sober for as many years as you were drinking. I last had a drink when I was 32, on Feb. 25, 1987, and since I had started drinking when I was 18, I figure I have at least two more years to go. Until then, I just go one day at a time, trying to figure out how to stay sober. I know that by drinking I will die. I chose life today, and with God's blessing, for years to come.
-- Name withheld

_______________JUSTICE IN JASPER BY FAULKNER FOX (02/26/99)

So Faulkner Fox is "completely bowled over" by the racial dialogue and apparent (to her at least) harmony in Jasper, Texas, after the death penalty verdict? What a surprise that someone hiding out in a college town, afraid of "scary looking white men in Bubba hats burning what [she] hoped was trash," would nearly swoon when she saw whites and blacks hugging. Come on, Salon, couldn't you at least give a story about such a profoundly disturbing crime to someone who has some intuitive understanding of small, Southern towns and the complexities of race relations in them? Most of us who still live in towns like Jasper, and not in large-university enclaves like Austin, find that there are good folks and bad folks on both sides of the racial divide, and that even well-meaning references to "Bubbas" and "crackers" just make things worse, for all of us.
-- Caren Town
Statesboro, Ga.

N E X T+P A G E+| "Why has Mothers Who Think become Writers Who Stink?"

_______________SOBER TRUTHS BY CAROLINE KNAPP AND THE BEAUTY OF ALCOHOL BY DAVID BOWMAN (03/01/99)
	What were you thinking when you juxtaposed the Carolyn Knapp article on longer-term sobriety with the David Bowman silliness on beer-drinking? Was this an attempt at irony? Humor? Some weird kind of balance? Knapp may take herself way too seriously, but the beery guy's writing is about as interesting as a smoker's belligerent defense of cigarettes. -- John Mihelic Minneapolis David Bowman asks, in all apparent sincerity, "Why on earth would anyone want to face a day completely straight or sober?" Then he answers that it's because "in the end alcohol kills the body." As someone who enjoys a glass of good wine or a shot of Glenmorangie or a cold beer, all I can say is that the world is a darned interesting place that, for me, isn't improved one bit by being anything other than sober. Fear of alcohol has nothing whatever to do with how I regulate my use of it; getting everything I can out of life has everything to do with it. -- Lisa Hirsch I found David Bowman's paean to booze to be a strange counter to the article discussing one person's account of her battle to remain sober. The article was below what I have come to expect from Salon. It lacked the essential factor of reality that has made so much of your publication nightly reading. In my 40 years as an adult, I have known many who drink and many who work very hard not to drink, but I have never met a person like Bowman. The article was too facile, lacked depth and was not sufficiently funny to be considered as comic. This topic deserves a better treatment. -- R. Culp One of the reasons I did not buy or read Carolyn Knapp's book about her recovery was the simple truths that I heard in the rooms of AA. I remember this big guy sitting in a chair in a room in Spring Lake, N.J., telling me that you didn't get your brain back until you were sober for as many years as you were drinking. I last had a drink when I was 32, on Feb. 25, 1987, and since I had started drinking when I was 18, I figure I have at least two more years to go. Until then, I just go one day at a time, trying to figure out how to stay sober. I know that by drinking I will die. I chose life today, and with God's blessing, for years to come. -- Name withheld
_______________JUSTICE IN JASPER BY FAULKNER FOX (02/26/99)
	So Faulkner Fox is "completely bowled over" by the racial dialogue and apparent (to her at least) harmony in Jasper, Texas, after the death penalty verdict? What a surprise that someone hiding out in a college town, afraid of "scary looking white men in Bubba hats burning what [she] hoped was trash," would nearly swoon when she saw whites and blacks hugging. Come on, Salon, couldn't you at least give a story about such a profoundly disturbing crime to someone who has some intuitive understanding of small, Southern towns and the complexities of race relations in them? Most of us who still live in towns like Jasper, and not in large-university enclaves like Austin, find that there are good folks and bad folks on both sides of the racial divide, and that even well-meaning references to "Bubbas" and "crackers" just make things worse, for all of us. -- Caren Town Statesboro, Ga.
	N E X T+P A G E+\| "Why has Mothers Who Think become Writers Who Stink?"