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In last Sunday’s New York Times Modern Love column, author Joyce Maynard wrote about trespassing
into the e-mail account of her 22-year-old daughter, Audrey. The
daughter had temporarily relocated to the Dominican Republic when her
communications home were abruptly and, to Maynard, ominously silenced.
From reading the correspondence, Maynard learned that her daughter was
embroiled in a personal dilemma—one that she apparently needed to
resolve without involving her mother. After justifying the invasion of
her daughter's privacy ("I dreamed my daughter was running ... her face
a mask of grief"), Maynard goes on to tell Modern Love readers the
details of her daughter's very emotional crisis, including results of
her HIV tests.
Maynard has, apparently, always had difficulty with boundaries. In 1972, when she was 18, the writer published a confessional essay in the Times
about her generational perspective (sample: “Marijuana and the class of
'71 moved through high school together”) that brought her national
attention. She was later criticized about her 1999 memoir that excruciatingly detailed her teenage affair with then 53-year-old novelist J.D. Salinger. Maynard also auctioned off her love letters from the reclusive author.
Even had Maynard not been notoriously ... (Read more in Double X.)
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For most of us, sitting down with our Sunday New York Times is a relaxing experience. But for an unlucky few, it can suddenly turn into a choke-on-my-scone nightmare.
Flipping idly through Sunday Styles, the hapless reader comes to the famous "Modern Love" column, soon to be turned into a TV series. There she reads about "Nick," whose girlfriend broke up with him using a PowerPoint, or Husband X, whose wife no longer wants to sleep with him, or "Froky," the ex-girlfriend who... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website at DoubleX.com!)
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