Hate Mail

An inevitable challenge of the writing life.

“First off, don’t let the force of the impression carry you away. Say to it, ‘hold up a bit and let me see who you are and where you are from—let me put you to the test’…”
—Epictetus, Discourses

The first time I received hate mail—shortly after the publication of my first book—I seized up, momentarily paralyzed. It was as if whoever had typed the caustic words had barged through the door of our Brooklyn apartment and was now taking up space on our couch, staring me down.

I sent a plaintive email to my agent who replied promptly: this is all fine, she told me. Good even; you’ve hit a nerve. My editor concurred. Perhaps this was what they told all first-time authors.

I wasn’t so comfortable with this bit of nastiness hanging out on my Amazon review page, so I stopped reading my reviews. More hate mail came, sometimes directly through my website contact page. You’ve hit a nerve, I told myself. It’s all good. But these posts and emails never stopped jangling my nerves. Sometimes, I felt a need to respond. I wrote what I hoped was a calm defense of my book. Sometimes the hatemailer replied, mostly not.

My second book, Eva and Eve, is a memoir about my mother, who was born Eva in Vienna and after fleeing Nazi persecution in 1940, arrived in the United States and reinvented herself as Eve. I didn’t set out to write a timely book, but as it happened, my research and writing coincided with the rise and election of Donald Trump. In his dehumanizing and bullying remarks about immigrants (rapists, criminals, vermin, poison, animals), it was impossible to ignore the connections in rhetoric to the rantings of Adolf Hitler and other anti-Semitic proselytizers of the 1920s and 30s such as the radio host Father Coughlin. By the time I was completing final revisions, I felt I had to point out these connections, that not doing so would be a crime of omission.

By the time Eva and Eve was published, I figured I would get some hate mail and I have.

The most recent example comes from Rose W—. She does not mention Trump by name, but she is clearly offended on his behalf and did her best to offend me in a way I imagine she hoped would cause me pain. The email appears here complete, as typed:

I bought you Eve and Eva book for a dollar last year after only about o year on the library book shelves, and it was a waste of my money. You are a bully and I didn't even finish this poorly written book, so even though I cannot burn it in my city, It goes in the trash is this week's pickup. I will not even donate it, it's not worth putting anyone else through your bullying.

Rose was telling me that I was trash, my book was trash and that she would burn it, if only local law permitted.

Nazis were big into book banning and burning. Ray Bradbury’s dystopic novel Fahrenheit 451 is about book banning and burning as tools of cultural erasure and thought control. Of course, Rose has the freedom to hate my book as much as she wants but she seems not to have made this connection: that true freedom means many ideas existing at once. Reasonable people can disagree about an issue without destroying each other or the expressions of their ideas.

Unfortunately for Rose, I have been doing some internal work on my fragile writer ego. Recently my partner brought home a book of daily meditations inspired by the Stoic philosophers. The Daily Stoic, by Ryan Holiday, offers a quote from Marcus Aurelius or Seneca, or Epictetus with his short commentary. The Stoics lived in challenging times of war and upheaval. Their goal was to move through this madness by not internalizing the actions and emotions of those who deliberately wish to cause pain, but instead to remember that while we cannot control what others think and do, we can do our best to be mindful about our responses. In my life as a writer, I cannot control other people who launch attacks on my work, but it is up to me how I choose to react.

Upon receiving Rose’s email, I felt that same twinge of pain, that momentary paralysis. In a previous time, I might have taken time to write a cordial reply to Rose. I might have tried to defend my work to a person who had already made up her mind that I am a bad person, trash.

The fact that Rose would have preferred to burn my book would seem to prove my point about the inflammatory rhetoric of her idol, but by now I have accepted the excruciating irony that there are millions of Americans who are not interested in facts as Merriam-Webster defines facts. They can listen to their chosen leader lob ad hominem attacks on anyone he dislikes that day and not see a bully. They will cheer and applaud. We are living in a time when millions of Americans are worshipping, literally, at the altar of Trump, who is only too happy to take their money. These millions are not ready to give up on him. They cannot, because they’ve gone all in and to turn away now would be to reject someone who has come to define the core meaning in their lives. The loyalty their idol demands is so extreme that they cannot allow any other ideas to peek in. They support book banning as a way to “protect” their children from considering ideas that might contradict their views.

I have never experienced this kind of devotion—either to a person or an idea. I have been blind in relationships. I have succumbed to misinformation. Thankfully, a moment has come when I have understood my blindness and have been willing to say—aloud or to myself—that I was mistaken. My actions were wrong. The feeling in these moments, as brain neurons spark and rewire, is startling, almost like Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

The older we get, the harder it becomes to change our thinking. This is why engaging with children is so important. In my recent life, the most dramatic moments of pivoting have come during conversations with my daughter. I’ve felt all the emotions, from: “no, I’m right, you’re wrong, because—,” through sullen silence and misery, to the moment when I am finally ready to stop and truly listen.

I make a point to read columns by writers such as “Never-Trumper” Ross Douthat, even though I find him pompous and verbose, the champion of the twenty-dollar word when a short one would do. Not to mention his conservative take on religion and why we should all get married, make more babies, and why women should have no control over how and when to birth those babies. You can see that just thinking about Mr. Douthat is pissing me off. But I read his words because I need to understand how “pro-life” people think. It’s a healthy if exasperating exercise. I privately hope that his children grow up to become pro-choice lefties, and snicker at the delicious schadenfreude I would feel, but I am glad we still have some semblance of free thought exchange. He has the right to try to persuade me and I try to listen, the better to rebut.

I’ve hated and returned food at a restaurant. I’ve hated a few movies enough that I’ve left the theater. Recently, I hated a play so much that I almost left the theater.

I’ve hated books. I hated one so hard that I threw it across the living room. Then I calmed down, picked up the book and placed it on my stoop for someone who might want to pick it up.

I have never sent an insulting email to an author because I know how it feels to receive such a missive. Unless the author is guilty of lies and deliberate misinformation, I have respect for anyone who has dared to publish words, even those I disagree with profoundly or find thoughtless or stupid. In the privacy of my home, I might think and call that person an idiot or worse. I have posted what I hope are intelligent and reasoned comments on Mr. Douthat’s columns.

Hate mail is not the thoughtful expression of an opinion. It is something else. It is an attempt to demean and dehumanize, just like a bully. In our current time, it is, more dangerously, an attempt to create fear, to threaten, to shut us up.

The ALA just announced 2023's most-challenged books. Consider choosing one for your book club or your personal reading list.

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Thank you for reading and as with all posts here, I’d love to hear from you! More to follow each Friday. I hope you’ll subscribe and share with other readers. You can find out more about my memoirs Perfection and Eva and Eve here and purchase here. I work privately with writers on creative non-fiction projects. If you are interested, you can contact me through my website: juliemetz.com. A first consultation is free of charge.