exleysdavenport

exleysdavenport

rrkent

Oh dear. So what if (judging by a person's improper use of, say, agreement) she doesn't even write well! It's cool though, Em, you probably only talk about your snowflake post-breakup ordeal so much because you type fast.

ThomasPynchon

I don't understand the justification that it is okay to repeat painful details of someone's personal life just because "the public" already knows about it. The ad nauseam repetition is desensitizing and thus a form of belittlement.

shesaidwhat

Now god damn it, Bob, it's almost eleven! I need two thousand words on homicidal hamsters!

KarenUhOh

jeweltones

Carol Gardens

Have something in by 9:30, will ya, hon?

KarenUhOh

clickable

Well done. Your comment answered every generous impulse I had in his favor.

@Greasy Thumb Guzik:
Exactly. I've been trying to come up with comparable humiliatingly public romantic disasters, but the only one I can think of is Jennifer Jones leaving Robert Walker for David Selznick.

[en.wikipedia.org]

And Bob, you are no Robert Walker.

The casual arrogance of "I kept telling her she was the second-best writer in the house" (or words to that effect) is going to be with me for some time.

I guess being the little-wifey-helpmeet to the (moderately) Great Man ain't what it used to be.

Seeräuber Jenny

i find it slightly disturbing that i now feel like i should be giving almost exactly the same advice to a 62 year old, pulitzer prize winning novelist.

i don't see the original e-mail as an attempt to assassinate dewberry's character so much as an attempt to stay in control of her: "see, i understand her feelings better than she does herself. i know everything about her. i know what's best for her. she may have, technically speaking, left me, but her feelings are still mine." nothing in this most recent e-mail makes me change that perception.

seriously, bob, she's left you. let it go. put on some katrina and the waves and dance around the house with the bichon frise. you'll feel so much better.

slinkimalinki

What I don't like about his most recent letter is his attempt to win people over - reminds me of those who've read "How to Win Friends and Influence People" then ask you a gazillion questions at a party b/c they believe that people "enjoy talking about themselves" and so, rather than possessing real interest, they REALLY HAVE CONTEMPT FOR YOU.

minx

Mr. Butler? Put the pen down and step away from the desk slowly. Seriously, dude. You aren't doing yourself any favors at this point. And stop talking to gossip columnists, you idiot. What the hell were you thinking? Who the hell talks to a gossip columnist about their marriage? What kind of people reared you? Were you raised in a barn? Don't you have any self-respect?

Leave your wife out of this. You got yourself into this mess. All we did was point out how you completely abandoned the boundary between public and private. I see you as all too human, and that is why this bothers me. If this were about Paris Hilton, I wouldn't have gone past the headline.

I think you are regular folk, Mr. Butler, but why would regular folk do something like this? Whom can that email possibly benefit? What purpose can it serve other than to fuel idle gossip? NONE. None purpose, Mr. Butler.

Having opened the floodgates of gossip - and you held those gates wide open yourself, sir - you compound the grotesquerie by eagerly jumping onto the most public stage offered you. From bellyaching at Gawker one minute to comparing yourself to Brad Pitt on Page Six the next, are you starting to see why we think you're an attention whore?

This is no accident. Regular folk do not suddenly find their private affairs gracing the front pages. Regular folk use the sense of propriety instilled by their parents (as I'm sure your parents instilled in you) to know when it's time to go home, shut the door, and shield their families from scrutiny.

You seem to think that you are entitled - no, compelled, and by your wife, even! - to expose your wife's fragile psyche to your graduate students. Bullshit. She may tell her narrative if she wishes, but you may not. Even with her permission. Remember the old aphorism about how discretion is the better part of valor? And remember what we learned yesterday, about what happens when someone insists on being an attention whore in these trying times, when there's a sneering, self-righteous circle jerk happening just around the cybercorner, eagerly waiting to call you on your hypocrisy? You urged the recipients of the email to share its contents if the occasion arose, and to use any and all of it to tell the full and nuanced story. They did, and we are. Hope you're appreciating so far.

You seem to think, too, that you owe your graduate students an explanation of why, in your view (or at least how your view sounds in that email) your wife's many and varied sins of omission and sins of commission, together with her general inadequacy compared with your general awesomeness (did we mention your Pulitzer?) and her failure to adapt to your exalted status (did we mention your Pulitzer?), caused your marriage to fail. Apparently you were a paragon of husbandly perfection, bordering on saintliness, yes? Because nothing in that email would lead me to think you bear any responsibility for the current state of affairs. I'm just saying. And please please please please please don't see this as an invitation to spill any more of your guts, thankyoueversomuch.

That's exactly what your email sounds like, only worse. A petty attempt at character assassination, coated in sugar syrup. It's been done, but seldom masked in such grace and subtlety. You're not bad, I'll give you that. I think I'm gonna go git yer books outta the liberry, gits me summa dat edumacation.

You didn't miss even a single mark, and maybe that's why you sound so hollow now when you cry foul. Each sentence, and then each paragraph, and then the whole, was so perfectly balanced, containing equal parts venom and honey. At first I thought it was unbelievable. Now I just think you're unbelievably fucked up. I believe you are being mendacious when you say you are shocked and dismayed to be in the spotlight. The only thing you are shocked and dismayed about is that you can't control its glare.

I don't feel sorry for you because you are old enough and sophisticated enough about the ways of the world to know better. You steered your way from the backwaters of Tallahassee to Page Six and to the portal of Slate at the speed of lightning, and I think the avalanche has not even gained full momentum.

/EMILY! WHAR'S MAH KOOL-AID?

clickable

Seriously, is anyone else weirded out that a Pulitzer prize-winner feels this burdened by this site and our dumb two-sentence comments? He seems like a genuine, sensitive guy, if a little rambly and TMI. But hell, that TMI/rambly instinct is probably what compells one to write full length novels. And then, you know, win Pulitzers for them.

Mr. Butler: Quit now before you are further heckled on this site. Arguing your case here is like attempting a blood drive at a whiskey bar. And you should hire someone to maintain your Wikipedia page. Best of luck to you. Breakups are difficult.

Steverino

nonce

Oh and I live on the same block as the Boston Scientology church- I have fun stories about that, too. None about Cassavetes, though. I don't know much about verité.

StuckInBoston

StuckInBoston

MisterHippity

silencedogood

YourWildHorses

reillykat

Debussy Fields

Products Will Save Me

fritosforlunch

fritosforlunch

SNAP

Sigerson

KarenUhOh

Haha... I was thinking, "And I am telling you..."

@Dick Malone: HA! although to make the analogy a little more perfect, it would be Sideshow Bob incessantly walking onto rakes on purpose, not because he has no other choice. what's that saying about insanity - doing the same thing multiple times and expecting a different result?

@Clare: Gold Star!

genevieveyorke

@depardoo: As the T/D relationship will end within a week.
The story that the international media has picked up and run with: "Pulitzer Prize winning writer sent out an email announcing that his wife left him for billionaire Ted Turner because the media mogul resembles the grandfather who molested her as a child."

I can't help but think that this is Butler's Tabloid Wet Dream. He's no fool in this sense at least: for many years he has made a close study of popular tabloid media. Underneath this concern for others he must realize that this is a boon for him as a writer. What writer in America has gotten this much attention recently? He knows full well that he is going to have increased sales and reviews of his next publication.

In his missive to Gawker Butler is still missing the point: he is the one who comes off looking like a pathetic, vindictive cuckold. He doesn't seem to realize that we'd have more sympathy if he'd just nut up and admit it. Yes, our passions lead to follies that put us all at our worst. (Thanks teacher but some of us have read Flaubert.) There are those who act out their passions - and follies -- more publicly - and spectacularly - than others, thus providing gawkers, gossipers, circle jerkers, sadists, masochists, and satirists with grist for the mill. And for that we are grateful.

Okay, I do admit that this feels a bit like bear baiting except that he is the one who keeps providing the tune.

shesaidwhat

mathnet

Sara Benincasa

Products Will Save Me

StuckInBoston

Exactly. I need to pre-order the "Gawker got me fired" T shirt.

Sargasm

'Cuz if that's an olive branch, I'm keeping my own intestinal blockage well away from it.

noonchi

Toastgod

Pulitzer Enhancement Potion.

depardoo

If so, Hi, future researchers! Hope your thesis on how the women in his life affected the work of Ted Turner is going well.

mockingbird

tracybluth

cassandra

cassandra

ljnd2

But even I can't defend his e-mail noir.

NOLAchica

Seanibus

Paddington

You know, that kind of discretion and loyalty to a prior relationship is an exceedingly rare thing. On the internets, where anyone can be a pseudo-anonymous publisher, it is all but extinct.

I concur with the assessment that this man wrote the email for his own personal gain, not in defense of his ex's dignity, but that is a common crime of the brokenhearted. I think his gravest misstep is that he truly doesn't understand the medium (email and internet). Private face to face conversations are not recounted in the same manner as forwarded emails. Context is everything and it is utterly lost at this point.

All this said, ROB has kind of made this Gawker's 9-11. Mesmerizing trainwreck.

karion

OK, R.O.B., so vagueness has left you looking like this summer's Literary Weeble ("Weebles Wobble But They Don't Fall Down!"). It's time to try the other choice.

TheBigDoggy

(Damn! I can no way stop laughing at that!!)

DorothyMantooth

lefty

And, from what I hear, a select number of colleagues outside Florida, too.

RonHogan

MadameDecline

Liberace

But hey, last time the Braves acquired a big ticket first baseman, they won the World Series!

Debussy Fields

"P.E.P. are piping hot at this time! This is the real stuff not a counterfeit!
One of the very originals, totally unparalleled product is on sale around the world!
Take a look at just what people say on this produce:
'I like how quickly P.E.P. had an affect on my boyfriend, he can no way stop jabber about how excited he is having his new size, length, and libido!'

Lusia R., Boston
'At first I thought the free specimen I received was some kind of joke, until I actually tried taking the P.E.P. I can not describe report how greatly satisfied I am with the consequence I got from using the patch for 7 short weeks. I will be requesting on a regular basis!'

Steve Doubt, San Diego"

Best of luck with your future relationships, Bob.
Yours, burstingly,
KUO

KarenUhOh

Phineas Poe

adropp

"Nuanced"? Now that's funny.

Little Mintz Sunshine

Yorick

Bobby, buddy, (and I should be charging you $400 an hour for this advice), STOP. Say nothing more. Turn off the computer, close the shades, hunker down and wait until something else bright and shiny attracts everyone's attention, and then you can slowly emerge and begin to cope with the fact that you now the most dickless "man" in the world.

OK, you're welcome

Truculent

dango

Greasy Thumb Guzik

maybe i'll take the subway to times square now for a "stress test." maybe that cult will acknowledge it's cultishness.

the cajun boy

Astro-Nom

Can't wait to see the Christmas letter this year.

MissOlivia

Products Will Save Me

tete rouge

Of course, this would have to be one of the friends who isn't lauging their asses off at this situation, because, as a previous poster noted, they ALL think this situation is hysterically funny. No better way to liven up a slow Southern summer than with a little hot gossip, especially if said gossip involves the 'Mouth of the South'.

InsideOut

benmaimon

When friends who had known my parents since COLLEGE said "you're getting divorced?? But whyee?" My mom's reply was "well, I didn't wake up one morning and decide my children don't need a father." Translation: the bastard needed leaving, none of your business, thanks for your concern, yes I could use a babysitter occasionally, now fuck off." And you know what? We all made it, even the people who didn't get the EXACT SPE-FUCKING-CIFIC DETAILS of the entire catastrophe.

Bob or whoever (I already forget his name) isn't a serial killer or anything, but God dude, you should've let it go to begin with or dished with your students over a few brews like the rest of the profs do when they fight with their spouses. For the love of all that is holy, turn off your computer for a week, and I guarandamntee this will be over with when you cut the shit back on.

jeweltones

And, Bob, every Gawker commenter who has actually read you thinks you're a terrific writer. But face facts, dude - you're not widely known to the general public. So your statement that Elizabeth is getting away from your suffocating shadow by hooking up with a billionaire who's a household name and prevents nuclear war and tooth decay doesn't ring true.

GeorgeBabbitt

ckeav

semperfido

LaPretentieuse

mindbling

Curse_of_NursePornstein

The best thing Gawker and R.O.B. could do, is, well, a couple more entries, and turn it into a chapbook and sell it as a joint venture.

And Bob, Fall Semester '07 needs to be known as "the time your breath smelled like FSU cheerleader ass."

Seriously, get out there. Get a convertible, some Jimmy Buffet CDs, do some keg stands, and give life the same curveball it threw at you!

Liberace

Right on.

I love how the Germans always have a word for it.

heartbreakturnip

Mike Barthel

I wish you hadn't said "naked and wrinkled." Two words that never go well together, like "grandpa" and "boyfriend."

heartbreakturnip

Everyone seems to be forgetting that these are HIS grad students. Not hers. She didn't teach at FSU. His co-workers didn't need to know about her personal stuff, let alone her boyfriend's. All they needed to know was that Butler, the co-worker, was getting a divorce and that it was amicable.

If there had been gossip, he could have either addressed it or not, because it wouldn't have been his problem, it would have been Dewberry's and Turner's to deal with. It's not anybody's responsibility to do spin control for their ex-spouse (let alone their new partner who has a giant staff to do that shit).

I mean, seriously. Let's be honest. He wrote the email because he didn't want to look like a schmuck whose wife left him for a rich man. Sadly, it turned out to be what the Germans call a Schlimmbesserung--the attempted improvement that actually makes things much, much worse.

VenusCloacina

Aatom

Smitros

Mariallena

SarahHeartburn

PikachuMcHeidegger

It devolved from an odd but endearing note from a caring ex-husband into something like a saving-face, I-wanna-change-the-world diatribe from a cuckold. People pay publicists big money to defuse these situations, Bob. Just let it go and it'll go away.

thomas

Actually, yes. Yes to the second two, anyway. As for the first, we just accept her zombie fetish for what it is and try to move on.

VenusCloacina

BadUncle

The real gold digging starts at 40. Before that, it's just sportfucking and jiggling The Girls for chump change and shoes.

stew

see, that's why your woman left you. you're a little beeyotch! what you should have done is go crack that muthafukka in his teeth. then you come home and tell her what you did. and just when you see that spark of respect and desire rekindled in her, you tell her "now get the fuck out and go take care of your broken-tooth boyfriend."

it'll be more effective if you're not holding that ugly ass poodle at the time.

Joe_Welcome

Products Will Save Me

But instead, he continues overcompensating, talking about how everything he said was justified.

Hey Bob, that hole you're digging? It's only getting deeper.

jazzy

stew

Weirdly, though this last email is no less douchey than his others -- and more douchey if possible, considering the gratuitous mention of Ted Turner's sexual abuse, which: you're no more whole, Bob, just because some freak didn't touch your private parts as a kid, we all have our challenges and your ugly, technical, condescending response to your wife's problems perhaps accounts for the karmic blowback and comments you're getting on Gawker now.

I do feel bad for him, though. He's floundering. It's true that he took this to a public stage on his own, but now he's standing naked and wrinkled under a blinding spotlight on every hairy pore, and it's clear he's a person who has but a slim understanding of the concept of "consequences."

cassandra

But is anyone else with me on this? After age 40 or so, a woman no longer really gets the gold-digging slut designation. There's nothing particularly sick-making, in a stranger's eyes, about an accomplished middle-aged woman hooking up with a wealthy and accomplished post-middle-age man.

Does anyone really think to criticize, say, Mrs. Sumner Redstone -- a 40-something school teacher until she met him -- or Jack Welch's new wife? Or Judi Nathan?

See? The middle-age thing kind of gives you an automatic pass.

LaPretentieuse

PikachuMcHeidegger

ohkay

BinkysDream

HeatherNumber1

sexbot

cequirk

ninety_nine

First of all, please remove your balls from your purse.

Truths of the human heart? WHAT? The truths of Elizabeth's human heart lead her into the arms of a womanizing millionaire. Call her a gold digging whore and move on with your life for Christ's sake.

Hearts and Rainbows.

Hookerface Anonymous

HookerfaceAnon

Clare

Queen of the Passive Aggressives

Seriously, though, this is sad. We're not going to redeem you, Bob. If we ease up on you, Elizabeth won't unleave you, and you won't be unhurt. So stop trying to change our minds. Just walk away and rebuild your dignity.

cassandra

Mediahohoho

I can't wait to tell my parents that a Pulitzer Prize winning author cares what I think about him!

HeatherNumber1

Hemingway's posthumous "Garden of Eden", for example. Thank God that old goat didn't have e-mail.

depardoo

BinkysDream

KarenUhOh

Gawker, why not just send him a commenter invitation? This guy is the new poster child for user generated content.

ambitious heckler

pbica

VenusCloacina

Products Will Save Me

StrategicallyPlaced

Although I have to say, if Mr. Butler doesn't like the comments he's read here, I hope he never sees the ones on TMZ and other sites. We're just a bunch of smart-asses trying to be clever. Those people are mean.
In closing, the correct word for Gawker readers isn't "followers." It's junkies.

TedSez

kw

LaPretentieuse

GirlCat

PikachuMcHeidegger

depardoo

sexbot

NoDowdAboutIt

Tears.

whoneedslight

fritosforlunch

Want their email addresses?

Clarence Rosario

VenusCloacina

Gwenishka

Thanks.

MsMuffinMcGuffin

PikachuMcHeidegger

GeorgeBabbitt

Products Will Save Me

dado

LolCait

earlytimezone

Sev

This was a seminal text of my youth--my brother and I can still crack each other up simply by speaking the name "Odoreida".

VenusCloacina

stew

Smackdown

Glittersauce

Pandemonium

ElDub

Helman

Clarence Rosario

Trixie from Toronto

PikachuMcHeidegger

josh speed

sexbot

Yes, some of us may want to do this - seeing as how it worked out so well for you, R.O.B.

FormerEnglishMajor

contradicto

To Mr. Butler, because I know you are reading this: Please admit that you were acting out of (understandable) pain, and that you wrote a passive-aggressive, douchebaggy email because you wanted to get your side of the story out and make yourself feel better.

Your email could have been used as an example in Stephen Potter's Gamesmanship series in how to undermine someone else's position while maintaining a veneer of concern. That you still contend that it was a sincere attempt to help is ludicrous.

Try to analyze your own behavior with the same depth of understanding you bring to your fictional characters. Of course this is hard, especially when you're hurting. But you owe it to yourself, and to your work, and to your students. Don't be remembered as "the guy who threw a very public tantrum over a narcissistic wound," because you can be so much better than that.

VenusCloacina

He's a self-promoter. He can't let it go.

A referenced lyric to apply here to you, Bob:

"I'm the little girl at the picnic
Who won't stop pulling her dress up
It doesn't matter who's in control now
It doesn't matter 'cause this is the new radio."

KarenUhOh