The Unsinkable Mollie Wilson

Dizzyhead Mollie didn't care for the New Yorker's piece on Paul McCartney, and her reasons were sound and stylishly put. (I would expect nothing less! M. wrote the inaugural "Essay" for me, over at the PTSNBN, a delicious skewering of Madonna's shouldn't-have-been-a-book, Mr. Peabody's Apples.) Mollie's so good her post made me rethink my own enthusiasm. (That's probably too strong a word—I wrote here that I found the repetition of hoary Beatles chronology comforting, like an origin myth. OK, I'm a sap.)

I linked to her post yesterday. This morning, Dizzyhead Devin mentioned some sort of kerfuffle over at Restricted View...lo and behold, there is time for fussing and fighting, my friend: The author of the piece has posted several miffed comments on Mollie's blog, and the whole thing was picked up by the Huffington Post. Mollie responds as civilly as she can...but the New Yorker writer continues to get massively worked up; he throws in plenty of generalized "zingers" about blogging, which are juvenile in a way Mollie's criticisms never are. ("If only bloggers ran the actual publishing world!" "Damn, this blogging stuff is fun! You just kind of type away...") Most irksome is his sense of superiority; of course he's a better writer than our Molls; he writes for the New Yorker! She's just a blogger...

Mollie's headline today: "I could make it longer, if you like the style..."

Game, set, match: Wilson!