This piece started accidently on Twitter as a tweet in response to a line Colson Whitehead had tweeted, about notes for a short story he was taking, although, he said, he didn’t write short stories. He thought he’d call it “The Full Iceberg.” My tweet grew into a riff, and then into its own story about Colson, shipwrecked on an iceberg, with a small penguin named Edwina. Not all the lines were tweeted, and some were subsequently re-shaped, but they all retain the “tweet format.“

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 @colsonwhitehead sits cross-legged on the iceberg and stares back at the penguins staring at him. “Shipwrecked with non-talking birds,” he mutters.

A section of the ship still rests on the iceberg. Penguins waddle around and through it as if they are at a museum.

@colsonwhitehead pieces a quilt from comic books left in the ship’s bunkroom and stitches it with red thread. “Art,” he tells the penguins.

The penguins are impressed. Or at least they shift from one foot to the other and gurgle quietly as they eye @colsonwhitehead’s art-quilt.

I’ll call this art-quilt “The Full Iceberg,” @colsonwhitehead says. “Is it edible?” asks the smallest penguin. She has blue feet.

@colsonwhitehead looks closer at the smallest penguin. She has blue shoes on, not blue feet.  http://bit.ly/50AsV

“Like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves, as though we were drowning inside our hearts, as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul,” he says.

“Pablo Neruda,” the tiny penguin says. She blinks at @colsonwhitehead. “My name’s Edwina. And this story’s about me, not you and your wrecked ship.” “Fine by me,” he says.

Penguins dive off the iceberg. Plop-plop-plop. @colsonwhitehead hums as he watches a sapphire light deepen on the horizon. Edwina sidles near.

The ghost-ships on this iceberg crowd them. A cold wood flank touches warm one. Edwina clambers into @colsonwhitehead’s lap. Shivering.

“We’d rather have the iceberg than the ship, although it meant the end of travel,” Edwina whispers. “Elizabeth Bishop,” @colsonwhitehead says. “And I’d rather have the ship.”

“You need a flag,” she says. “First flag, then ship.” “Oh no,” @colsonwhitehead says. “I’m not using the art-quilt. I’ve already named it.”

“Well, un-name it.” “No,” @colsonwhitehead says. “I don’t un-name things, only name them.” “Oh pooh,” she says. “Think sideways for once.”

 With one wing Edwina sketches a shape in the frigid air. A white flag appears. Wavering. “Ghost-flag,” she says.

@colsonwhitehead looks at it. He sighs. “Nope. No more ghosts.” He hoists the red-thread-comic-book-art-quilt in the air. “Art-flag,” he says.

Edwina clicks her black beak in pleasure. Small fissures open on the iceberg. They zig-zag like ghost-snakes. The sound of branches snapping, breaking, unseen.

A sigh of night. Fissures widen. An all-black ship rises from lapping water and hangs, glistening, mid-air. @colsonwhitehead feels his chest squeeze. The sheer beauty.

“It worked,” Edwina says. “You can fold and put away the art-quilt-cum-flag now. Only one small problem.” “What?” says @colsonwhitehead.

“Um. The ship has only two directions. Up. Or down.” @colsonwhitehead glares at the small penguin. “THINK SIDEWAYS,” he says.

Edwina does. She thinks so hard that her blue shoes pop off and reveal blue feet. The black ship suddenly shifts in the air and balances on its prow.

There is sea-water raining on them. The cracks in the iceberg become maws. “You know,” says Edwina, “I don’t think we WANT to know the full iceberg. It might not be good for us.”

“Good point,” says @colsonwhitehead. “You’re coming with, right?” Without waiting for an answer he wraps her in the art-quilt and ties the ends around his chest.

Up @colsonwhitehead goes, fingering and toeing his way up the sideways-ship as if it were a tree. A muffled screech comes from the art-quilt.

“I don’t like heights,” wails Edwina. “There’s always something,” says @colsonwhitehead. “Now hold on.”

One fatal crack, like thunder, like a redwood trunk severed. The sky goes abruptly dark, a curtain pulled on the stage of the past.

Then the muttering of a TV. The smell of coffee. Edwina looks around, dazed, at the interior of a Brooklyn apartment flooded with sun.

@colsonwhitehead is sprawled on the floor on top of his art-quilt. Edwina studies him. “You look rather penguin-like around the eyes, you know,” she says.

@colsonwhitehead sits up. “And you,” he says, “look obnoxious around your beak.”

“Your art-quilt fell apart,” Edwina says. “It looks like a bunch of crappy comic books.” “No deconstruction before breakfast,” @colsonwhitehead says. “Now let’s eat.”

And so they do. One tall, one small, both smelling of brine and fish, scooping Cheerios into their mouths.  Waiting.

They hear a voice. “Some are asleep, on the bottom of the world, sucking the world in, and blowing it out, in wave-lengths.  Radiant ghosts.”

“Michael Dickman,” Edwina says.

Now that the uproar has died down and Alice Hoffman is off somewhere bandaging her tweet-wounds and regretting her  New York Times public apology http://bit.ly/lcVvb –and the Boston Globe reviewer has retired back to near-oblivion….

I’d like to say that’s the first public stoning I’ve ever witnessed. A virtual stoning, 21st century style.

Mostly it seemed to take place on Twitter, and the aftermath was re-hashed in print media. The fuss, for those of you who missed it, was over Hoffman’s response to a rather lukewarm and inept  review of her new novel, The Story Sisters, by Roberta Silman in Hoffman’s hometown paper http://bit.ly/4d7f4x . Hoffman essentially had a small fit on Twitter (and not a very dramatic fit either, since it lacked any cuss-words, firearms or hyperbolic threats), and topped it off by publishing the email address and (incorrect) phone number for Silman, suggesting that her readers contact the reviewer to complain.

The publishing of the contact information is what most tweeps–i.e. authors, book reviewers, journalists, and lit-bloggers–seemed to find beyond the pale.  Editors and literary agents remained studiously quiet, though they may have been frantically DMing (direct-messaging) in the background. Additionally, people seemed outraged at Hoffman’s lack of professionalism and good sportmanship in a public forum, and sent such a hail of tweets her way that Alice Hoffman finally ended her Twitter account and permanently withdrew from Twitterdom. This, one notes, occurred on the same day that Alain de Botton published on his reviewer’s blog the sentiment: “I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make.” http://bit.ly/UatCe .  Oddly enough, Hoffman’s decidedly less vituperative fit drew more attention.

Now, I definitely do not condone such childish behavior from a writer. Definitely. Never mind that I’ve acted equally immaturely in my private life on a weekly basis. Hoffman is a PROFESSIONAL, a FAMOUS AUTHOR, who manages the unnatural balancing act of being both literary AND a best-selling writer, and she lost control in public. And god knows, writers never act badly.  Ever.  I mean—remember when Richard Ford walked up to Colson Whitehead at a Poets and Writers party, and spit in his face, as a response to Whitehead’s review of Ford’s book http://bit.ly/zbKK8 ? Or when Norman Mailer punched Gore Vidal? Or when…well, here’s a couple of articles about other authors behaving badly, from Jason Pinter’s blog and Rachel Donadio’s  article in the New York Times Book Review : http://bit.ly/16e1ZZ and http://bit.ly/ucbzv. Cynthia Ozick (as quoted in Rachel Donadio’s article) says: “There’s a great deal of…jealousy, excoriation, disapproval, putting down. And the more successful a writer is, the more of that there is.” So perhaps the unique, visceral and immediate nature of Twitter lent itself to the deluge of disapproval.

I myself am an inconstant fan of Hoffman’s work. From what I remember of what I’ve read by her, I have admiration for her talent and her potential and her early work, but felt that some of her later work was a bit spotty and self-indulgent—which in fact might be laid at the feet of her editor,  since a lot of editors don’t crack down and actually edit. But still. I hate to see people bullied in the name of politically correct behavior.

1. No one pointed out that Roberta Silman’s email address was published at the end of the Boston Globe review. Silman herself made the email address public.

2. I didn’t think that Hoffman’s reaction was that interesting, in the context of the history of authors’ behavior. I did think the reaction of OTHER writers to her behavior was interesting. It’s possible they projected their own fears and anxieties onto Hoffman, and then attacked her for it.

3. My greatest perplexity was: Why Alice Hoffman? What was it about her that drew the ire? The fact that she’s so successful, and, hither-to, ladylike? Would people have been as shocked if, say, Elizabeth Wurtzel or Mary Gaitskill had lashed out at a reviewer? And why was more attention paid to Hoffman’s behavior than to de Botton’s behavior? Because he’s less famous? Or because he’s male?

I don’t understand why the audience to this tantrum professed such shock. We’re talking about writers here. You know—part of the Artist Species. The kind of wild creature that drinks absinthe and cuts off his or her own ears. Since when have writers become such docile animals toeing the corporate line? I realize they have mortgages to pay, people to suck up to, tenures to secure and books to sell. But does living in the real world also mean turning into a  Stepford Artist? We need to allow our writers and artists to act badly every once in a while, because sometimes we act badly too–whether in public or in private. After all, what did that early international bestseller say?  That those without sin among us should cast the first stone?   In retrospect, I think the people who criticized Hoffman acted worse than Hoffman did. It was like watching the Puritans tear after a fleeing would-be witch. And I think we’d all be better served talking about why the mob formed,  and why the mob went after Hoffman, rather than talking about Hoffman herself.

There’s no reason a writer can’t respond to a review of their work, and it’s not up to us to dictate the format or content of that response.  A response from the author creates a dialogue, sparks the imagination, and keeps the balance of power on even keel. And perhaps we should consider this cautionary note, from Donadio’s NYBTR article: “To some, the paucity of feuds is connected to the larger state of literary culture. ‘It’s not because we no longer have feuds,’ said Fran Lebowitz, the writer. ‘It’s because we no longer have literature.’