Janet Malcolm’s big New Yorker essay on the biographers of Sylvia Plath: boom! She shows me that the things I’m too timid to write can be written—that I should trust the stuff that my inner censor has been telling me to scrap. Meanwhile, in the New York Times someone reviews a book: ‘a model polemic, full of autobiographical detail, conversations with friends, family and colleagues, and debates the author has had with himself and critics.’ Is that what a ‘model polemic’ is? I think maybe I can do that.