Author: Kelly Caldwell

Note to writers: This letter contains spoilers of the film Fatal Attraction. Be forewarned!

Back when I was single, I accidentally scared off a few dates by mentioning that I sympathized with the character of Alex in the film Fatal Attraction. 

Hear me out.

You may recall — Alex (played by Glenn Close) has a weekend fling with her married co-worker, Dan (Michael Douglas), and when Dan spurns her for his wife, Alex loses it. She tries to win Dan back (one appeal involves a suicide attempt), and when she realizes he’s gone for good, she destroys his car, kidnaps his daughter, and in the movie’s most iconic scene, boils the family’s pet bunny.
Continue reading “The Shadow Self”

Awhile back, I was working with a student whose memoir encompassed the AIDS epidemic, being (illegally) deported from American Samoa, taking a midnight tour of Algiers, lecturing Madeleine Albright on the United Nations’ failures during the AIDS crisis (while Albright was the UN Ambassador), and explaining a suitcase full of female condoms to curious customs inspectors in Tehran.

Continue reading “A Title That Works”

In the 1840s, shortly after publishing his poem “The Vision of Sin,” Alfred Lord Tennyson received a letter from a Cambridge mathematics professor, who had a problem with a couplet in the middle that read:

“Every minute dies a man,

Every minute one is born.”

“If this were true,” the mathematician wrote, “the population of the world would be at a standstill. In truth, the rate of birth is slightly in excess of that of death.”

Continue reading “Feedback”