Special
"Sleep With Your Daughter" Issue
By what we beg you to
believe is a bizarre coincidence, this issue of Slate contains two articles
that take a benign view of fathers sleeping with their daughters. (Depending on
when you visit the site, one of these may already be in "The Compost." But it will
still be available there.) To publish one article on this tawdry subject may be
regarded as a slip-up; to publish two looks like an obsession. But sex between
fathers and daughters is an unavoidable subject at the moment, because of
Kathryn Harrison's memoir, The Kiss (Random House). Our senior
contributor Ann Hulbert reviewed it last week, somewhat skeptically. This week,
another regular Slate contributor, Luc Sante, comes to Harrison's
defense against vitriolic reviewers (among whom he does not include
Hulbert). Sante doesn't necessarily endorse father-daughter liaisons, of
course, but he does endorse writing about them. (Next month we will publish a
"Dialogue" between Harrison and one of her critics.)
Our "The Earthling"
columnist, Robert Wright, by contrast, does indeed endorse sleeping with your
daughter. In fact, he says he's shared a bed with both his daughters--and his
wife. Bob's daughters, we hasten to add, were infants at the time, and his
column is an argument against "Ferberizing"--the near-universal American
practice of training babies to sleep alone by ignoring their tears of
loneliness and terror. Dr. Ferber says it's good for them. Mr. Wright
disagrees. We'll see how his daughters turn out, and let you know in about 30
years.
Then there's our "Good
Sport" contributor, Joel Achenbach, whose article on the
thoroughbred-racing-stud system, "Emission
Accomplished," is mostly a highly educational description of two horses
mating. Birds and bees are not in the same league. As Achenbach is not vulgar
enough to point out (but we are), his piece puts all those stories about
Catherine the Great in a vivid new perspective.
Slate,
let us be clear, is a magazine about politics, policy, and culture--not about
sleeping arrangements, whether among family members, animals, or both or
neither. Who knows what mysterious forces led us down this garden path? As Noel
Coward once sang, "That cow's expression is quite obscene/It must have
something to do with Spring." Next week, though, it's back to the Future of
NATO. Or perhaps a Survey of Canadian Fiction. We promise.
Free
Lurking
"The Fray," our reader-discussion
forum, has always required user registration. The lawyers make us do this
because participants are publishing messages to the world and must take some
responsibility for what they say. But it recently occurred to us--we're a
little slow--that this logic applies only to people who want to write in the
Fray, not to those who just want to read it. So from now on, you can enter the
Fray--from the bottom of every article in Slate or from the contents
page--without registering or signing in. The Registration/Sign-In page pops up
only if you want to put in your own 2 cents' worth. We strongly encourage you
to do so. It's fun. It's free. And, in case you weren't aware of it, in the Web
culture people who enter bulletin boards and chat rooms but don't join in the
conversation are known as "lurkers." It's not considered sportsmanlike. At
Slate, though, we don't mind. Lurk away. It's easier than ever.
Local
Boy Makes Good
It's
being announced the day this appears on the Web, Friday, March 28, that Slate's
poetry editor, Robert Pinsky, has been selected as the next poet laureate of
the United States. Robert, who selects our poem every week, is much too
modest to have chosen one of his own. But you can sample his prose style in two
"Diary" columns he has written for us, one in August and one in December (both available in the Compost). The poet laureate is an
officer of the Library of Congress. His or her duties include converting all
public remarks by the speaker of the House into iambic pentameter (rhyming
optional); composing ribald limericks about any lawsuits filed against the
president for sexual harassment; and debating the chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee about whether a poem is lovely as a tree. Actually,
the poet laureate's duties are a bit vague. But we hope to persuade Pinsky to
keep another diary for us after his enthronement so that we can learn what it's
all about. Meanwhile, his epic poem about fathers sleeping with daughters will
be appearing on this site shortly.
--Michael Kinsley
