Writers

In an often-overlooked 1992 novel with perhaps the most intentionally dull title in literary history -- "Memories of the Ford Administration" -- John Updike has fun with an issue that long deviled his career. He introduces a character named Brent Mueller, a "rapid-speaking fellow with the clammy white skin of the library bound" who had "deconstructed Chaucer right down to the ground." Mueller serves as antagonist to the novel's narrator -- both are professors at a New Hampshire college -- and becomes a campus cult figure by deeming every masterpiece "a relic of centuries of white male oppression, to be touched as gingerly as radioactive garbage."

My wife and I are big fans of "The Office." We would like to congratulate Jon Caramanica ["C'mon, 'Office,' Lay Off the Pathos," March 15]. He nailed the elements in recent episodes that led to our disappointment with the writers of those shows. He accomplished this while highlighting what makes the series work so well. It was a great analysis. Ron Evans Pasadena

Regarding Mary McNamara's story on "ER" ("This One Delivered With Recurrent Fury," March 29): The strong emotional response that she described to an episode from 15 years ago, her immediate desire to talk to someone about it and the potential educational benefit she noted are classic examples of what is called "entertainment education" in public health circles. It's arguable that no one has done TV health better than the writers and producers of "ER." They will be sorely missed by everyone like me, who had the pleasure of working with them over the past 15 years.

All these years later, Frances Kroll Ring can still see it, the afternoon she filled out an application at Rusty's Employment Agency on Hollywood Boulevard and drove to Encino to meet a writer who was looking for a secretary. It was April 1939, and she was 22, a Bronx transplant with typing and dictation skills. She'd been in Southern California for a little more than a year, coming west to help her father, a New York furrier, set up shop on Wilshire Boulevard. "Everybody said, 'You're a furrier?

The Death of Bunny Munro A Novel Nick Cave Faber & Faber: 280 pp., $25 There has got to be something seriously wrong with you for liking this character as much as you're going to. Bunny Munro is as offensive as they come -- he's a sorry, crude traveling salesman who cannot think about anything but women's vaginas. It's as if he's OD'd on Viagra. " 'I am damned,' thinks Bunny Munro in a sudden moment of self-awareness reserved for those who are soon to die." Sure, he loves his wife, but when he comes home from whoring one night to find she's hung herself in their bedroom, he proceeds, once the body has been taken away, to watch porn and get blind drunk, leaving 9-year-old Bunny Jr. to fend for himself.

Great article about Akiva Goldsman ["For Akiva Goldsman, a Beautiful Turnaround," Oct. 18]. It's nice to see a fair and balanced perspective on the failures and successes of writers-directors as they pursue their craft in Hollywood. Chandus Jackson Los Angeles

Ten emerging writers, their home countries ranging from Vietnam to the United States, have received prizes of $50,000 each. The Whiting Writers' Awards, given annually for "exceptional talent and promise in early career," were announced Wednesday. The recipients included fiction writer Vu Tran, born in Vietnam and now living in Las Vegas, and poet Jay Hopler, a native of Puerto Rico who lives in Tampa, Fla. Other winners were poets Jericho Brown and Joan Kane, playwright Rajiv Joseph (whose "Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo" made such an impact in L.A.)

Few online entertainment ventures today make money. Yet that has not deterred striking Hollywood writers, eager to bypass the studio system, from forming start-ups to distribute their work on the Web. At least three start-ups, each with a different business approach, are unveiling their corporate monikers and the names of their founders as they intensify the search for venture capital and top management. With names such as Hollywood Disrupted and Virtual Artists Inc.

Once again the baseball writers voting for Hall of Fame entry have shown their complete ignorance of the game in making this year's voting a travesty. As it was in 2006 with Bruce Sutter, the writers have voted in only one player and in both years it has been a relief pitcher. And both years, as in recent years, they have all but disregarded the great players of the game such as Andre Dawson, Bert Blyleven, Jim Rice and Harold Baines, whose statistics and impact on the game far outweigh Rich Gossage and Sutter.