Our very own Eve had a letter posted in the New York Times Book Review this week - congratulations!
I don’t suppose you’d come back to post about your wrath at Lee Israel…
I agree with Eve. People like Lee Israel don’t deserve book contracts. They do deserve to be put in the stocks outside the New York Public Library for researchers to throw rotten fruit at.
Robin
I read the review which prompted her letter, and I agree with Eve. Lee Israel commits forgery, then writes a book “confessing” to her crimes, and is treated as if she were a clever child who is entitled to a cookie for fooling the adults instead of being spanked and sent to her room without supper.
I think Eve’s idea of the head on a pike is much superior to the stocks.
Great letter! 
Can the pike-placing be done in the traditional manner, with the remainder of the body parts staked throughout the countryside?
Maybe so, but the idea of throwing rotting produce at her is so much more satisfying.
Robin
The forger goes on to admit that plagiarism is “big-time wrong?” Ugh. Eve’s right. It’s bad enough when people do crap like this for fame and attention - it’s even worse when they’re rewarded with MORE fame and attention for writing about what they did in the first place.
And unless I’m misreading the original article, she also stole letters from library collections and sold them. So add theft on top of her forgery.
Applause for Eve. Just the kind of letter I like to read and editors like to print: to the point!
Well, to be fair, an entertaining book is an entertaining book. The theft is different, and should be punished as the crime it is, but if a diverting text is the result of this sorry episode, then we should be able to enjoy it. That being said, the author shouldn’t profit from it, either; the proceeds are owed, in my view, to whatever institutions have been harmed by the perpetrator’s misdeeds.
As a fisherman, I keep thinking of the pike/fish rather than the pike/weapon and it really makes for a weirder image.