New York City
December 21, 2000

Dear Readers,

Today’s letter comes from Stephen Osborne in Vancouver, who in addition to being an abnormally talented writer, is also the editor of Geist magazine, the Canadian magazine of arts and culture. If you go and visit Geist’s web site today, you’ll find on the front page yet more engrossing writing by Stephen, this time with a Christmas flavor, or at least a theft-of-Christmas flavor.

Speaking of fine writing by Open Letters contributors elsewhere on the web, I neglected to mention, in my editor’s letter about Paul Maliszewski’s letter on suing his ex-landlord, that “I, Faker,” Paul’s confessional magnum opus, is now available, in its entirety, on the web. In the article, which appeared in the Baffler, Paul describes an extended satirical project that he embarked upon while working at The Business Journal of Central New York a while back: he created a dozen or so fake (and often quite deranged) identities, and contributed letters to the editor, guest columns, and eventually made-up feature articles under their names.

“As Paul Maliszewski,” he explains, “I continued to report on quarterly figures and tepidly gauge the effects of proposed regulations. My fake characters, however, were free to engage business issues with everything from unhinged speculation to dimwitted appeals to common sense.”

I’ve been hearing people talk about “I, Faker” for a while, but somehow I’d failed to read it until yesterday. It’s a great pleasure; I recommend it. If you gohere, you can read the whole thing; if you go here, you can browse through the “I, Faker” archives, which include all of the letters that Paul’s alter egos sent to his paper, as well as this really entertaining fake article about an entirely invented Watertown, New York, company.

Two other things about today’s letter: (1) Stephen Osborne is also the author of an open letter on scooter accidents, which we published in September; and (2) his new letter shares a thematic, if not a chronological, kinship with the week of medical letters that we ran a couple of weeks ago, and especially with Kevin Patterson’s letter from Saipan, which addresses diabetes and its treatment from the doctor’s perspective; and Cheryl Wagner’s interview with Matt Salada, rock ‘n roll diabetic.

Our laid-back holiday schedule continues – this week and next we’re publishing only every other day or so. The next weekly will go out to subscribers on December 31; we’ll resume our regular daily schedule on January 1, 2001; that week will mark the end of volume III of Open Letters.

Happy holidays.

Yours truly,

Paul Tough