Betsy I
When I was in college, a budding screenwriter invited me to join a literary soiree in the west village. This was not an NYU sanctioned club, this was an off-campus affair, and I felt very honored to be included. The woman who called us together seemed much older than the rest of us; she was sophisticated and world weary, a cross between Gertrude Stein and Vanessa Redgrave. When we were introduced, she made it eminently clear that the name “Betsy” would not do. And from that moment on, she called me Elizabeth (my real name). Elizabeth, she said, was a poet’s name.
When it came time to publish The Forest for the Trees, I wanted to use Elizabeth on the jacket. The few poems I had managed to place in literary magazines were under Elizabeth. My editor balked. Everyone knows you as Betsy, she said. But how many people could that be, I asked. She insisted. I recalled my junior year abroad when I tried to be known as Elizabeth and introduced myself as such. It was fine at first, but later when people called me Elizabeth I would sit as dumb as stone, completely forgetting that I had changed my name.
I’ve always wondered about writers who hid behind initials: TC Boyle, EE Cummings, TS Eliot, AJ Liebling, AA Milne, AM Holmes, just to name a few. What’s up with that. Maybe I should have tried it: ES Lerner. I actually kind of like that.
Betsy Taylor
Before I love and leave you: I’m going to LA next week to pimp my wares. I don’t have a laptop and don’t know how regularly I’m going to be able to blog. I may just have to ask Keanu to hop off his desktop for a few. I’ll do my best. Until then, wouldn’t it be very entertaining to compile the biggest list under the sun of authors who go by their initials? Whatcha got?
Betsy Gilbert
Betsy Barrett Browning
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I went to a Man Ray exhibit today at the Jewish Museum in New York. Am I the last person to know that his birth name was Emmanuel Radnitzky? And sure enough, early in the exhibit there was Radnitzky at 13, portrait of the artist as a bar mitzvah boy. I would have enjoyed the exhibit more, but two women in front of me kept talking about their co-op boards and favorite brand of veggie burger. I know I could have walked away, but I was so disgusted by them that I was also attracted. There was also a father, son, grandson trio moving through the show. The grandfather was in a wheelchair. When the art was really outrageous, the old man would punch the air with his cane and exclaim, “He was meshuggenah! Meshuggenah, I tell you.”
It’s 2:00 a.m. Home after the annual agency holiday party. I’m wired, agitated, and depressed all at once. I’m one of these people who dread all social gatherings. Then I have a really good time. Then I hate myself. It’s so fucking predictable.
I did something really radical over this long holiday weekend: I took off. And I read for pleasure. Pleasure. No manuscripts. Just. What. I. Wanted. To. Read. I read Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist, which my best friend from graduate school gave me. If you give a fig about poetry, don’t miss this book. It’s dishy and funny and all too true about the bitch-fest aka the world of poetry. It’s terrifically entertaining and sad and sweet. Really, I laughed my ass off, but then again I’m always up for a good discussion of trochaic verse.
Also, I’m a die-hard Philip Roth fan. ( I can’t stand it when people say they hate Roth because he’s misogynist. That’s precisely why I read him, among other things. That said, were you to reject him on those grounds, this book would give you ample reason, and yes I’m talking about the strap on dildo three-way with two young women and our aging protagonist.) Look, not one of his better novels (should have been packaged with his last two as a collection of three novellas if you ask me, which no one is), but there was still one thing I loved about it and am glad I read it because I’ll remember it my whole life.
When I was struggling with depression in my twenties, there was nothing I hated more than hearing people wish one another a happy holiday. In the first place, it was fairly certain that I would wind up in emotional tatters during some part of the holiday weekend with my family. And second, the isolation of depression is only heightened when the expectation (sham?) of loving togetherness is intensified at holiday time.
Sorry if this is off topic, but unbeknownst to me there has been quite a bit of ink spilled about Betty Draper, Don’s Klaus Barbie wife on the brilliant television show Mad Men. Just today a big defense of Betty appears in that little blog trying to get established which I’ll link to 
She doesn’t really inhale or smoke convincingly on a show where the water cooler could take a more authentic drag.
Dearest Darling Reader:
Betsy Lerner 
