Wokking the Dog | Slugs | Christopher Hitchens

To: carlosamantea@yahoo.com

From: Fred M.Park

RE: Story about surgery with a shard of rock

Dear Sirs and Ms':

If there is any way to help find this wonderful account of a metaphysical appendectomy, I would be even more thankful for your activities. It must have run in TFR [The Fessenden Review] back in the early 1980s, when I was a hopeless but stalwart managing editor of The Leader in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.

Each copy you kindly mailed for my edification was cover-to-covered at regular intervals, and eventually I gave away each one because I was treasuring it too much.

Seems like the last issue I had was "Wokkin' the Dog."

I certainly want to subscribe to RALPH personally, or as personally as possible in this virtual realm. Do you bill me, or what? Sincerely,

Hi, Fred:

Speaking of natural wonders, neither the old editor of TFR nor I could quite figure out your reference to "metaphysical appendectomy." We do remember an issue headlined "Wokkin' the Dog," however. A tasty tail?

We'll put you on the list and send you a bill and when I dig up the moss-bound stacks of my favorite magazine (me, too) ... I'll see if you and I are talking about the same thing. For all I remember about such operations were the many fables of Filipino holy men extirpating body parts with bits and pieces of stone.

Thanks for remembering us, and for remembering our favorite four-year saga of non-electronic magazinery.

Sir, ---

Perhaps thinking it trenchant, Sudhir Hazareesingh recycles the jibe made by George Galloway against me, that I am "the first-ever metamorphosis of a butterfly into a slug." Leaving to one side Mr Galloway's own mutation from Sovietophile to Baathist to jihadist, the worst that can be said of gorgeous butterflies is that they pupate from rather charming caterpillars. Slugs, however, are condemned to remain slugs. Sad to see a Balliol man so oblivious of such distinctions.