|
|
METRO Magazine ran this letter to the editor from a local writer in its November issue. THE IMAGINARY MARTYRDOM OF DOUG MARLETTE I apologize for testing Metro readers' patience with the details of a controversy that had, I thought, vanished from human memory several years ago. But Kristy Shumaker's most recent version of the trials and triumphs of Doug Marlette (September Metro) cannot be allowed to stand without comment or amendment. This was not the first--nor the second, nor the fifth time Ms. Shumaker has celebrated the accomplishments and aired the grievances of the combative cartoonist. During her tenure at the News of Orange, our local weekly, Marlette features appeared so often under her byline that local wits renamed the paper "The News of Doug." But the only paragraph in this recycled story that concerns me is the one that refers to the Hillsborough "fatwa" against Marlette's recent novel and names me and my wife Lee Smith as two of the offending mullahs.Ms. Shumaker has at no time asked us for our response to this accusation, nor in fact consulted any sources other than Doug Marlette. Back when the story was current, she was not the only journalist who committed this sin against professional procedure and common courtesy, but she's the only one who has committed it repeatedly. In fact there has never been and never will be any corroboration of this peculiar story, because it is and was a figment of Marlette's imagination. To the best of my knowledge no writer of any description--including the injured party, Allan Gurganus--ever did anything to interfere with the commercial success of this book, which I have never read. And of course I know for certain and will testify under oath that my wife and I played no role whatsoever in the alleged "conspiracy"--if I had known of any such petty, infantile behavior, I would have condemned it as vigorously as Marlette does.The very odd thing is that Marlette, after a tortured phone conversation and an exchange of letters, conceded in print that we had probably done none of the things of which he accused us--though we were faulted for failing to leap to his defense. I have the letter if anyone cares to read it. So why, 30 months later, is the accusation resurrected? Is this one of the most durable paranoid fantasies in the annals of American obsession?Though my wife and I are bewildered to find ourselves still numbered among the saboteurs who tried to blow up "The Bridge"--that was a movie, I guess, or seven movies--at least we know how we made the list in the first place. Lee, who tried to help Doug when he was writing the book, called him after reading his galleys--as his friend --and advised him to drop the caricature of Allan Gurganus. I called my former publicist and advised her--as her friend--that representing this book might cost her a lot of business from authors who would side with Gurganus. She went to work for Marlette anyway, bearing my message. That's way too much on this teapot tempest of long ago. But this is for the permanent record. When someone tells an outright, unqualified lie about you in public--repeatedly--the most charitable thing you can think is that he, at least, believes it. Now that I have ample reason to doubt that he believes it, malice aforethought begins to occur to me. As a former friend of Doug Marlette, I've worked my way through amazement, indignation, and anger to--finally--pity and grave concern.-- Hal Crowther, Hillsborough Marlette responds to Crowther in the December, 2003 issue of METRO: |