Open Letter to Jean Waggoner, anent Beatrice, Laura, Molly Bloom and Lolita:

Jean,

Back from the library,  reading the Paradiso, and suddenly I hear this moist, sploogey popping sound, and a cracked, trollish voice (mine) keening in the wind, "Why do I have to give a shit about Beatrice?  She's ugly, smug, stupid, laden with cooties, and I hate her.   Ditto for Laura--much as I love, love, love Petrarch's lovely sonnets to her, the actual, blood and flesh sentient being you get a whiff of every so often is an utter dipshit, and not very sanitary.  And Molly Bloom?--How'd you like to sleep with your nose up that ass (like Leopold does)?  What's funny about Lolita is Humberto Humberto's attributing (with no justification whatever) all those evidences of personal character to a featureless, witless child.  Which, by the way, is what most heterosexual males do to the featureless, witless children they marry.  And that frankly is how things look to this curmudgeonly gay (not queer!) person,

Douglas.

Poor Jean--as I will hasten to explain to her--I'm only dumping this bilious, misogynist (anti-heterosexist) bad shit on her because she's an English teacher and I don't know anybody else who'd understand me.  Still, I am bemused and amused to find in the Italian Facebook some corroboration:  C'é l'uno, da prima, che scrive, "Noi che, al posto di Beatrice, preferiamo Virgilio."