Editor,
The Indy’s created headline “Fictional Tale Antagonizes Reader” for the letter published in the Jan. 9th edition of the Indy, is inaccurate, misleading, and clearly an editorial slant to infer silliness and hostility of a reader reacting to a fairy tale. Editor, in all fairness to free open speech, as long as it is not offensive, please publish the letter writer’s headline instead of injecting the Indy’s bias. As the writer of the above letter I was not antagonized, and certainly not by a fairy tale. My letter was a fair, legitimate rebuttal of the author’s obvious personal, social, political, anti-American and racist commentary; regardless whether the writing was fiction or not.
That being said, I would certainly argue that the writing is a mixed genre of essay, commentary and fiction; not strictly a fictional short story. Readers would need a strong “suspension of disbelief” to believe the author is not the character telling the story in the first person; relaying personal and historical facts while espousing commentary for nearly the first half of the writing.
In the second half of the writing I am happy that the post Christmas, pre-New Year party on Dec. 28 and all the characters that attended were fictional. As realistic fiction, I think the writer did a great job with the use of allegory and symbols to get her social, political, anti-American, racist views across. It is those views that I rebutted and criticized in my letter, not some fictional tale.
As a cautionary note, the author may want to be careful with the naming of fictional characters especially when location of where they live is also given. There happens to be at least two people living in Laguna Beach with the name Steve Johnson; the fictional person crassly vilified in Anita Razin’s story “New Year’s 2001: A Short Story” published in the Jan. 2nd edition of the Indy.
Stephen Tygh, Laguna Beach
